


When the Storm Breaks

by Hazelmist



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: AU after S1, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:16:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 48
Words: 256,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3733633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazelmist/pseuds/Hazelmist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She probably hates him, and maybe she should. He reaches for her anyway. Alec and Ellie are trapped together in a storm. Eventual Alec/Ellie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It Started with a Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Quand la tempête éclate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7017223) by [NorthNorthWest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthNorthWest/pseuds/NorthNorthWest)



> I started this story in September 2013 immediately after watching Broadchurch Season 1 and falling in love with Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller along with the rest of the Broadchurch universe. It began because I wasn't ready to say goodbye to them, and I had no idea at the time that it would be renewed for S2 with the full cast or that there was a book. It ignores Season 2 and will be AU after the Season 1 finale.

The storm starts just hours before their first face to face encounter, but it had been brewing in Broadchurch for months. 

Ellie Miller loathes Alec Hardy even before she meets him on the beach on that fateful day. He took her fucking job. Of course she hates him. And Alec Hardy isn’t exactly charmed by her either. He wanted peace, quiet, and to be left alone. Instead he’s interrogated, harassed, and smothered by this little rural D.S. that’s so adamant about protecting the innocence of her small town that she might ruin his entire investigation before it can even begin. 

They’re so different that it’s amazing they get anything done together that first week. She strikes him as far too warm, naïve and stubborn, and he’s so cold, bitter, and aloof. He infuriates her. She annoys him. But they’re driven by the same desperate need to solve this crime and catch the bloody bastard that killed Danny Latimer. She knew and cared for the boy, and he needs to clear his conscious with this crime before his time runs out. Somehow, united by their mutual desire to get justice at whatever cost, she learns to bite her tongue and open her eyes to the darker truths of humanity, and he begins to listen to her and share the burdens he carries with her. Gradually, their hostility towards one another evolves into tolerance, respect, and even a fragile trust. 

Fifty-nine days later the storm that ripped through that sleepy town finally takes its last victim, as the exhausted killer is beaten down by his own conscious and steps forward to confess to Alec everything he needs to hear. 

The case is closed and Alec finally gets his closure. His heart should be able to rest easy now that his penance is done. He loses his job and he almost sacrifices his life in the process, but at least it’s over. The moment he saw Danny’s body on the beach, he knew he would give everything he had left just to bring this crime to its horrific conclusion. But he never expected that it would hurt this much or that he had anything else left to lose. 

Breaking the news to Ellie nearly fucking kills him. She worked so hard and had done so well, and yet all along the cold-blooded killer was sleeping in the same bed as her. While Hardy had foreseen his own tragic demise, Ellie had not and had never had any reason to. In a matter minutes, her husband is exposed and severed from her forever, her heart is broken, her family is destroyed, and the entire town that knew and loved her, the whole damn community that she had once fought so hard to protect from him and the very killer that slept under her own roof, has turned its back on her forever. Her whole world is shattered with three revealing words. 

_“It was Joe.”_

She cracks right there in the interrogation room and Alec knows that nothing he or anyone else does or says will ever be able to put her back together again. That’s what destroys him. 

The storm of Danny Latimer’s murder threatened to demolish the little community of Broadchurch, but from a distance Alec watches the entire town coming together on the beach to heal in the aftermath. They hold hands and grieve side by side, lighting fires and remembering the life of one of their own. And Alec knows that though they’re hurting now, Broadchurch will survive this and continue to go on, perhaps stronger and closer than ever. He hates them just a little bit for it, because she’ll never be a part of it.

The storm breaks, and Alec is left adrift in its aftermath, an outsider once more. And this time Ellie is there with him, ostracized, devastated and so very alone. He knows she can’t look back, because it hurts too much. And he can’t look at her directly because he recognizes the storm simmering in her eyes. The anger at her husband’s betrayal still seethes inside her and he can’t bear to see it, because one day it’ll be gone, and she’ll only find herself to blame. And he’ll hate to see her so empty, so alone, and so much like himself. 

She tells him she’ll move on, give the boys a fresh start, and he knows she will try her hardest for the sake of her two kids. He realizes now that he underestimated her when they first met and that she can handle a lot more than he ever expected. He thinks that maybe if anyone can move past this, it’ll be Ellie. 

But when he finally turns to look at her again, she’s twisted around and gazing at everything she just said she was leaving behind. 

“We can never go back to the way things were,” she whispers disbelievingly and her voice cracks. She brings her hand to her mouth, but she can’t hold the sobs back any longer. She’s miles away from him now, wrapped up in her own private hell that she’ll live in long after Danny Latimer’s story is buried. He’s not even sure if she’s aware he’s still sitting on the bench beside her, and he probably should let her alone to grieve. But he stays. 

She probably hates him, and maybe she should. He shifts closer to her on the bench. She flinches when his shoulder brushes hers. He reaches for her anyway. She lashes out at him, calls him some nasty names, and he thinks that this is the last time they’ll see each other and that maybe she really does blame him for everything. But then she collapses against him and drags him down with her into that dark spiraling storm and he knows that she wasn’t yelling at him. He’s the only thing she has left to hang onto.

Now, he feels how much she’s hurting because she’s hurting him. He can feel her nails snagging on his coat, tearing at the seams as she clings to him. Her tears are so hot that they sear his skin as they soak through the fabric of his shirt. Each and every sob rips through him like the storm that tore through this town, and he knows now that Ellie Miller is not just something that was washed up like a piece of driftwood in the wake of the storm, she is still trapped in the center of that storm. And now so is he. 

He holds her closer and they try to ride out the storm together. 

He doesn’t know when she finally cried herself out and fell asleep on his shoulder. But he does remember rubbing his face only to have his fingers come back wet and salty with tears that may or may not have been his own. Exhausted, he leans back on the bench, noticing for the first time that the skies are clear. Shivering, he huddles closer to her warmth before closing his own eyes and shutting out the constellations above. 

He opens his eyes again to the brightness of a new day dawning in the aftermath of a storm. He can hear the distant roar of the waves from here. The sea’s calmer today and though the fires burned out hours ago, the smell of smoke still lingers in the air. Danny’s death will always linger here even if they did manage to lay the case to rest. 

“Tell me it was all a bad dream.”

More than anything he wants to tell the broken woman curled against his side that it was nothing more than a nightmare. But it’s the one thing he’ll never be able to do for her. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes. Her face falls as that last spark of hope burns out, and he’s reminded again of what he never thought he had left to lose. He reassures himself that though the storm is far from over for her, she doesn’t have to weather it alone. He’ll make sure of that. 

“Come on,” he says, nudging her. He gets up from the bench and holds out a hand to her. She takes it automatically, allowing him to pull her to her feet. 

She’s drawn back one last time and they drink in the sight of that slumbering coastal town together. 

“I don’t know where to go from here,” she admits helplessly. 

“I don’t think any of us do,” he agrees, but it’s a lie. When she leaves, he knows he’ll follow her. Because he’s already decided that he’s going with her, wherever she chooses to go, until he’s certain that the storm is truly over and Ellie will be okay.


	2. Lost in a Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter picks up a few months after the first chapter.

It had been a somewhat promising day, but as usual the meteorologists had gotten the weather forecast all wrong and his former colleagues at the Broadchurch police department had proven themselves to be stupider than he remembered. Now, retired D.I. Alec Hardy was trudging uphill and desperately trying to ignore the tightness in his chest and the dark clouds that were rolling in overhead. As the wind picked up around him, he stopped to catch his breath and pulled out the map he’d hastily drawn out under the direction of the new D.S. Even as he squinted down at his own messy scrawl, large droplets of water were dotting the paper. He tried to smooth it out and he smeared the ink as the rain came down harder. Shoving the worthless map into his pocket, he shouldered onward in what he hoped was the right direction. 

Fortunately, the road soon ended in a steep incline that led up to only one little cottage half buried in hedges and shrubbery. It surprised him that she would’ve ended up here so near and yet so isolated from the community she’d loved and then destroyed. Didn’t it hurt being in such close proximity to the crime? After Sandbrook, he couldn’t get far enough away from that place. But Ellie’s case had been different and so was she. 

Pulling his coat closer, he knocked loudly on the front door. He was anxious to get out of the rain and to get this done with quickly. The last time he saw Ellie had been months ago, and they hadn’t parted on the best of terms. He had tried to talk her out of attending her husband’s trial, but she’d ignored him and gone anyway. It hadn’t taken long for the media to catch wind of her presence, and when they couldn’t get their hands on Joe or the family, they attacked her instead with rude reporters and blinding camera flashes. There had been nothing Alec could do, and Ellie had blown up at him when he finally got her away from them. Alec knew he wasn’t to blame and that she just needed some time to cool down, but he’d lost his temper and told her that it was her own fault for coming. By the time Alec was ready to talk to her again, Ellie had already vanished and had wisely changed all of her contact information so the press couldn’t pursue her and her family. And that was why Alec was shocked to find her so close to home and why he was currently standing on her front stoop in the pouring rain. 

Alec swore under his breath, cursing the stubborn Ellie, the goddamn weather, the whole stupid little town, and the inept police department that had called him in because they were too cowardly to take care of it themselves. He knocked again and the door cracked open. Recognizing the shadow in the doorway, he hastily swallowed another string of foul words.

“Hello, Tom,” Alec said, recalling the name of Ellie’s eldest. “I’m Detective Inspector Alec Hardy. I used to work with your mother,” he reminded him, flashing his old badge.

“I know,” Tom said, nodding and opening the door wider. 

“Is your Mum around?” Alec inquired. Tom shook his head but he glanced uneasily over his shoulder, confirming that she had to be somewhere nearby. Alec had already noted the car in the driveway hadn’t been moved in some time. 

“I really need to talk to her. It’ll only take a minute, I promise,” he reassured the nervous boy. “May I come inside?” Alec asked as politely as possible. Tom shook his head.

“I’m not supposed to let anyone in.” Tom tried to shut the door but Alec’s hand shot out to halt him.

“Please, Tom, I just walked from town and got caught in the storm. Can I at least come in for a moment to dry off and call for a cab?” he begged. He didn’t have to act the part; he was completely drenched and getting more wet by the second. Tom bit down on his lip and Alec shivered. 

“Fine,” Tom said, turning and leaving the door wide open for him. “But if Mum finds out, I’m telling her you held me at gunpoint.” 

“Thanks,” Alec said, shutting the door behind him and deciding not to tell the boy that he’d been relieved of his gun months ago. He sincerely hoped Ellie had been too, because he wasn’t sure if she’d shoot him when she found him in her house. 

He removed his dripping coat and hung it on one of the hooks by the door beside Ellie’s bright orange parka. Then he took off his shoes because they were caked with sand and mud from the trek up to the house, and he didn’t need to give Ellie another reason to murder him whenever she decided to emerge from wherever she was hiding. He found it very hard to believe that she’d gone anywhere in this weather without her car or her parka, but then again he had. 

He was damp and chilled to the bone, but at least he wasn’t out in the rain anymore. Awkwardly, he padded through Ellie’s new house, coming across a kitchen and then the sitting room where Tom sat perched on the edge of the sofa, pretending to be absorbed by the television. 

“Tom, do you mind if I make myself a cup of tea?” Alec asked softly. “I can make you something too if you’d like…?” Tom hesitated, but then shrugged and turned the television off. 

“Okay, I can show you the kitchen,” the boy offered, hopping up from the sofa and leading the way. Alec followed, noticing that Tom had grown slightly since the last time he’d seen him. Kids grew up so fast, and Alec winced at the thought of how much his own daughter must’ve grown since he’d last seen her. 

Now, that he’d found a suitable excuse for Alec’s presence, Tom seemed to have conveniently forgotten that Alec was only supposed to be there until he could dry off and call a cab. He helped Alec with the tea, making a show of taking some himself, even though it was obvious that Tom hadn’t yet acquired a liking for tea yet, despite the addition of a lot of honey and sugar. Tom toyed with the cup and his saucer as Alec made polite inquiries that he answered with shyness and reluctance, and then gradually with more confidence and enthusiasm. At first, Alec’s only objective was to figure out where the hell Ellie was but as they continued to talk, Alec began to take a genuine interest in Ellie’s son. Perhaps, it was because he was out of practice, or maybe it was because he missed his own daughter, but Alec quickly lost track of both his goal and the time as he and Tom got lost in the world of sports, school, and Tom’s life in general. 

It wasn’t until the baby started crying, that Alec glanced up at the clock and was alarmed to see that nearly an hour had passed, and Ellie had yet to make an appearance. Tom paled and abandoned Alec and the tea in a mad dash for the stairs. Alec stood and stopped at the bottom of the staircase. He could hear Tom soothing the child with nonsensical words somewhere on the floor above, but when the child continued to fuss, Alec followed him upstairs.

“Shhh, Fred, you’ll wake Mum,” Tom was telling his younger brother in a hushed voice as Alec approached the nursery. Alec paused, glancing down the hall at the only closed door. Ah, so that was where Mum was hiding. For the first time, it occurred to Alec that there might have been a legitimate reason as to why Ellie had been so hard to get a hold of, and he felt a little ashamed that he had intruded. 

Then Tom came out with the pudgy toddler balanced awkwardly on his hip. 

“I think Fred’s hungry,” he said, thrusting the child into Alec’s arms. Alec barely had time to catch the squirming toddler before Tom was racing back down to the kitchen. Stealing a last guilty look at the closed door, Alec went after Tom with Fred.

Tom seemed to know a lot more about taking care of a toddler than Alec had when his daughter had been this age, and Alec marveled at how much older Tom was now in the absence of his father. It occurred to him suddenly that Joe had been a stay at home Dad and had probably spent more time with his two sons than their own mother. Alec couldn’t even begin to conceive the kind of impact that the loss of Danny and his father must be having on Tom. Up until this point, he’d only thought of Ellie. But the frazzled boy before him and the toddler that refused to sit still in his lap were a reminder that she wasn’t the only one who would have to deal with the repercussions.

Two hours later, Alec gently extracted the sleepy toddler from his older brother who had worn himself out trying to chase after him and keep him quiet enough not to wake their mother. Tom was now fast asleep on the sofa and Alec didn’t have the heart to wake him. Scooping Fred up, Alec took it upon himself to return the toddler to his crib. 

It was harder than he expected, not because he was so exhausted that climbing the stairs nearly did him in, but because it had been so long since Alec had held someone as small and helpless as Fred. The little boy was snuggled against his chest, drooling and blissfully unaware of all that his brother and mother were forced to endure. Alec remembered when his daughter had still fit comfortably into his arms, and he had an insanely strong paternal instinct to cradle Fred as long as he could and shield him from all the evil that was waiting for him in the world just outside the front door. The rain thrashed against the windows and the wind whistled through the branches, fiercely reminding Alec that there was little he could do to stop what was happening in the world outside. Besides, he’d done such a fantastic job protecting his own daughter that she didn’t even want to see him and had barely spoken to him at all in the past year. What could he possibly expect to be able to do for Ellie’s sons? Reluctantly, Alec lowered the child back into his crib and gazed down at him. 

He didn’t know how much time he spent watching Fred sleep and listening to the storm rage outside that little house, but at some point he must have sat down in the rocking chair and dozed off. 

When he woke the wind was howling, and he was facing the storm head on in the form of a very irate and terrifying Ellie Miller. And, while she did not have a gun, he quickly discovered that nothing compared to the wrath of Ellie and that she could turn anything into a potentially lethal weapon, including one of Fred’s seemingly harmless toys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware of the switch from present tense to past tense. It won't happen again until possibly the epilogue, if we ever get there, lol.


	3. Trapped in a Storm

In the end, Ellie wasn’t what brought him down. 

“Oh, my God!” Ellie gasped, as Alec bent over and clutched his chest. The shock of finding her standing over him like that had been too much for his heart, and the walk in the rain and chasing after a toddler for over an hour hadn’t exactly improved his cardiac condition. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, he reached for the pills only to discover that they were in his coat downstairs. Somehow, he must’ve managed to convey this to Ellie between gasps, or maybe she worked it out on her own, because the pills were soon pressed into his hand and then later a glass of water. 

It was a long time after he’d swallowed both down that he dared to open his eyes again. He was almost sorry when he was able to focus on her. A heart attack probably would’ve been better than facing her in this terrifying state. Fortunately, she looked almost as tired as he felt as she leant against the side of the crib across from him.

“Well, you look like shit,” Ellie observed, clearly suppressing the urge to call him many other worse things in the presence of her young son.

“Thanks,” Alec said. “You nearly sent me into cardiac arrest.”

“Don’t tempt me, sir,” Ellie warned him, eyes flashing. “You still haven’t explained what you’re doing in my sleeping son’s room in the middle of the night.”

“He’s still sleeping?” Alec noted with some shock. It had all been a bit fuzzy but he was fairly certain that Ellie had been yelling at him at one point to get up or she’d kill him.

“Fortunately, he is,” she said through gritted teeth, “but if you don’t tell me what’s going on than I’ll be forced to do something to you that will probably wake him.”

“He already did wake up,” Alec informed her. “And he made more than enough noise to wake up the entire neighborhood before Tom and I put him to bed. But you slept through it all. He must get it from you.”

Ellie went white and Alec realized that he was going about this all wrong. She’d nearly killed him, and she’d already made it clear she could and would do it again if necessary. He started to get up, but then she spoke quietly. 

“He gets it from Joe.” She was gripping the edge of the crib so hard that her knuckles were bloodless. “I’m a light sleeper but today I took some of those pills that help me sleep. It was stupid of me, I know, but I just needed to sleep…” she trailed off, her face softening as she took in her slumbering son. Alec felt a flash of guilt as he observed how badly she looked like she deserved those few precious hours of sleep. After everything she’d been through, who could possibly blame her? 

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” he sighed, slumping down in the rocking chair.

“Don’t – please, don’t _Ellie_ me,” she hissed, “I don’t need your pity too.”

He had pitied her when he first revealed the murderer and she broke down in the interrogation room right in front of him, but pity wasn’t what he felt when he looked at her now and he wished she could understand that. He knew she was strong enough to get through this on her own, but she didn’t have to push _everyone_ away just to prove it. That’s exactly what she’d done, though, after the trial. She’d holed up here, just miles away from the quaint little home that the happy Millers had once shared with nothing but a bottle of sleep pills to combat the memories that surrounded her. And it bothered him. 

“Would you rather I call you Miller?” he practically snarled. “Won’t be Miller, much longer though, eh? You must have already figured that out. That’s why they sent me, and that’s why you took your bottle of pills, isn’t it?”

Ellie’s head shot up so fast that he knew he had been wrong. She really didn’t know why he was there and once again he cursed the stupidity of each and every member of the Broadchurch police department. Alec gripped the arm rests of the rocking chair, resolving himself to break the painful truth to her yet again.

“Joe agreed to a divorce.” He dropped his eyes to where the paint was flaking beneath his fingernails and explained it all in a rush. “I brought the papers with me. They’re in my coat and if they’re not completely ruined by the storm I got caught in, you can sign them. If not, I can go back and get another copy so you don’t have to deal with the solicitor or the imbeciles–“

“Today’s my fourteenth anniversary,” Ellie interrupted him. Alec looked at her. “It’s the first anniversary I’ve spent alone and the first since…” She didn’t have to fill in the blanks. He knew now why she’d needed the bottle of sleeping pills to block out today of all days.

“He sent me flowers,” she told him.

Christ, Alec really wasn’t equipped to handle this. What kind of sick bastard would do something like that?

“I think it was something he set up beforehand, perhaps years ago, so he never forgot…” She shrugged. “I guess he never had any reason to think we’d ever…” She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. She looked so small and pale standing there in her nightgown and her hair undone that Alec didn’t know what to say. 

She sighed and turned to look at him. 

“Does it ever get easier?”

Alec had no idea what she was referring to until she held up her hand and he was drawn to the sparkle of the diamond on her left ring finger. Alec glanced down at his own left hand, but it was bare and after two years there wasn’t even the slightest indentation or change in color to mark the gold band that had rested there for fourteen years. He wanted to lie to her, he really, really did. But lying to Ellie was impossible now.

“I guess,” he said, rubbing the spot where the ring had once been. “But I don’t really know. It’s only been two years.” He’d lost so much weight as a result of the trial, the divorce proceedings, and the decline in his health, that the ring had actually slipped off his finger at some point two years ago and Alec had never found it. Alec thought it was appropriate, because like Ellie he probably would have never been able to remove it himself. 

Ellie looked so sad that Alec wished for the hundredth time that she didn’t have to ask him so many bloody questions. She should know by now that he wasn’t going to lie to her.

“It’s late,” he cleared his throat and got up from the chair. “I’ll check my coat for the paperwork and then I’ll call a cab.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, no one’s going out in _this_ ,” she scoffed, gesturing toward the rain streaked window. The wind and rain were still pounding relentlessly against the side of the house and Alec knew that she was right. 

“We’ll deal with the paperwork in the morning,” Ellie told him before he could refuse. “You can sleep on the sofa tonight.”

“I’ll sleep in here,” he offered, motioning toward the chair he’d just vacated. When Ellie narrowed her eyes, he informed her that Tom was already asleep on the sofa. 

“Oh, I can wake him up.” She turned to go downstairs but Alec caught her arm. 

“I’m alright with the chair,” he assured her. “There’s no need to wake Tom.”

“Fine, you’ll sleep in Tom’s bed,” Alec blanched and Ellie hastily backtracked, suggesting instead, “Or I can sleep in Tom’s and you can sleep in mine.”

“I’m sleeping in the chair,” Alec insisted stubbornly.

“You’re a guest. You can’t just sleep in a chair!” Ellie argued, her voice rising. 

“Of course, I can! I was, up until the point that you tried to kill me,” he pointed out. 

“You were in my son’s room. What did you expect me to do?” she snapped. She stepped toward him and stabbed a finger into the center of his chest. “And just for the record, if you do decide to sleep in here, I will make you wish you had a heart attack if you wake up my son at any point during the night.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Alec sighed, grabbing her hand and twisting it away from his chest. He pulled her from the nursery and closed the door behind them before they did wake the child up and she followed through with the threat. How could he have forgotten how maddening she could be? She wrenched her hand from his grasp and whirled on him. But a sound from below stopped them before they could continue bickering.

Ellie tiptoed to the edge of the stairs to check on her son. Alec folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the nursery door. At this point, he was so tired and frustrated that he was seriously contemplating walking out into the rain and sleeping in a ditch by the side of the road. Moments later, she reappeared and beckoned for him to follow her. Rolling his eyes, he let her lead him to her bedroom and shut him inside with her. 

“I’m not taking your bed!” he said, shaking his head. 

“God, you’re stubborn! You can sleep on the floor or in the bloody shower, I don’t care!” She pushed past him and he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed as she flung open a wooden chest tucked into a corner of the bedroom. “There are extra pillows and blankets in here. And the bathroom’s through here.” She crossed the room and opened a door to reveal the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom. 

“It’s a perfect bed,” Alec said upon seeing the small shower cramped into the tiny room. He’d never fit unless he slept standing up, and at this point, he probably would end up doing just that. “Just like a five star hotel.”

“I do what I can, sir,” Ellie said, bowing her head and flashing him a fake smile. 

He gallantly motioned for her to go first, adding, “You better use it now before I make up my bed in there.”

Ellie muttered something about him being a knob and then disappeared inside, slamming the door shut. Alec chuckled and leaned back against the headboard and the soft pillows. He was too tired to move and decided to close his eyes for a moment. By the time Ellie reemerged from the bathroom, Alec was still sitting on the bed and was nearly asleep. 

“After all that, the bastard took my bed!” he heard her hiss and he smirked, half tempted to claim it just to rile her. 

“I’ll move in a second, I promise,” he said sleepily, though he wasn’t quite ready to open his eyes. 

“It’s alright, sir, I can sleep on the floor,” she offered grudgingly. 

“No, I’m getting up,” he groaned, wincing as he sat up. He opened his eyes and the room went fuzzy. Damn it. He had to lie down again. Suddenly, Ellie was perched beside him and hovering over him with a fresh glass of water and the rest of the pills. 

“Just in case,” she said, setting them down on the nightstand.  
“Thanks,” he murmured. “But I’ll be up in a minute.” 

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Ellie ordered. He watched through bleary eyes as she rearranged the other items on the nightstand, collecting a flower tucked behind the framed photograph of her sons, before she picked up her own bottle of pills and fingered the lid. Alec reached for her wrist and stopped her. 

“Ellie, please,” he whispered and she went rigid. “Neither of us is going to sleep at all unless you get the bed.”

Ellie frowned and looked as if she might argue with him. But then her shoulders slumped and she hid the flower again and carefully replaced the pill bottle on the nightstand.

“Fine, move over,” she demanded, turning toward him.

“What?”

“You’re on my side of the bed!” 

“Aw, come on, Miller!” he moaned. 

“Shut it or go sleep somewhere else,” she snapped, smacking his shoulder as she squeezed into her side of the bed. 

“Maybe I will,” he grumbled petulantly but he slid over to allow her into the bed.

“Fair enough,” Ellie agreed, snuggling into the pillows beside him. The bed was a lot smaller than he’d anticipated. Whose idea had this been again? He shifted in the bed, trying to get comfortable again and his long arm stretched out over the quilt and accidentally settled on her hip.

“I’m married!” she reminded him, slapping his hand away. 

“Not for much longer,” he mumbled. 

The bed springs squeaked and he opened his eyes to find her sitting up and glaring down at him. He threw up his hands.

“I just risked my life and walked three fucking miles to deliver you your divorce papers. You better not be changing your bloody mind now!”

For a split second, Alec really thought she was going to murder him right there in her bed. 

“Alright, I’ll just go sleep outside,” Alec said hastily, struggling to sit up again. But Ellie already had a handful of his shirt in her hand. 

“ _You_! You rude, obstinate, irritating man! How dare you come in here and – and –“ She broke off as if she had completely lost her train of thought and then just when Alec was certain she’d give into her rage and smash his head into the headboard, she did something shocking. She snorted and released him. “Shit, you’re right.” Her shoulders shook and he realized that she was actually laughing. 

“I’m getting divorced on my fucking anniversary. And my husband sent me _flowers_!” she went on hysterically laughing. “He couldn’t even get my birthday right most years,” she giggled, wiping at her eyes. Alec couldn’t help it, Ellie was right, it was somewhat funny in a ghastly way. A snicker escaped him, and then his shoulders were shaking as well, because Ellie was laughing and it was contagious. 

“And then of course they just have to send _you_ out in the middle of a storm because I was such a mess that I didn’t even fill the paperwork properly. Who misspells their own name?” she asked herself before swatting his arm. “And _you_ , you don’t even work for them anymore, do you? What the bloody hell are you doing here?” 

“I don’t know.” Alec shrugged. “I think they were either terrified of you or they were too stupid to realize that you had only moved a few miles away. Can’t really blame them though, after the trial I tried to find you and this is the last place I ever would’ve looked.” Ellie sobered, and Alec immediately wished he could bite down on his tongue and take it all back.

“You were looking for me?” She gaped at him.

“Why’d you come back?” Alec asked, avoiding the question in her eyes by asking one of his own. “Why here? They shun you and blame you for something that isn’t your fault.”

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

“You could’ve gone _anywhere_ ,” he reminded her but she shook her head.

“This is all I’ve ever known, and in a way, maybe - maybe I do have to take the blame. I was the one sleeping next to him, and I never saw it. How could I not see it?” Her eyes shone with tears as she turned toward him. “I loved him, I _still_ love him. I hate him now too but I can’t stop thinking about how happy we were here.”

“I know,” he whispered, laying his hand on her arm. “And you never will, but Ellie this isn’t your fault.”

Ellie sniffled and sunk down in the pillows, turning her back on him. Her breath hitched and he knew that she was trying desperately to swallow her sobs. 

“I know it’s difficult, but you have to forgive yourself,” he said softly.

“Just like you did?” she retorted bitterly. 

She rolled over to face him and he felt a weight on his chest that had little to do with his heart condition.

“I know that’s why you’re here,” she said softly. “You feel obligated, don’t you? You feel somehow it’s your fault that this happened to me just because you were the one that finally got him and told me it was him.”

He shut his eyes and swallowed hard. 

“But it’s not your fault, Alec,” she said firmly. Her hand rested lightly on his chest and he opened his eyes to find her hovering at eyelevel. “This is not Sandbrook. You did what you had to, and you caught the killer. Don’t make me into some kind of penance again just because you think you broke me in the process. You didn’t.”

He gazed up at her, seeing for the first time a flash of the proud Ellie that had held her head high and hadn’t been afraid to tell him exactly what she thought of him. And he finally had the courage to tell her what he really thought of her. 

“I don’t think anyone could ever break you, Ellie, you’re a lot more stubborn and stronger than that,” he told her thickly. “Just don’t forget it.”

Tears welled up in her eyes and Alec was sure that he’d screwed up again. God, why couldn’t he control his tongue around her? 

“You’re wrong,” she said weakly, echoing a statement that had been made months ago, but this time there was hope in her eyes instead of horror. 

“I’m not,” he insisted, sliding his hand up her arm. 

This time she didn’t argue with him, instead she curled up beside him. She didn’t object when he lazily left his arm around her, but he raised his eyebrows when she decided that his chest made a more comfortable pillow. 

“Oh, come off it,” she grumbled. “You’re taking up more than half the bed and I’m practically divorced.” 

Alec laughed and Ellie fell asleep smiling. 

Outside the little house, the storm battled on, but inside Alec and Ellie finally slept in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this in 2013 because NEVER in a million years did I think we'd EVER get a scene close to the one we got in S2EP4 lol.


	4. Stranded in a Storm

The worst storms were always the ones that no one ever saw coming, former DI Hardy mused as scenes of damaged properties flashed across the television screen. More high-speed winds and heavy rains were predicted for the rest of the day and possibly evening, and warnings were issued for high tides and severe flooding in some areas. Of course, he just so happened to be stranded right smack in the middle of one. Alec muted the television and tossed the remote aside. 

Getting a car in this weather was going to take at least an hour, probably longer. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Coming here had been a mistake. He’d been stuck here for eighteen hours and he’d already taken four of his damn pills. If he was forced to remain in this house with _her_ for just one more hour he was afraid that he’d run out before the sixty minutes were up. The prospect of spending another _minute_ in the same room as _her_ was daunting enough to make him think -

“Shit!” 

A loud crash drowned out the rest of Ellie’s cursing and the television abruptly turned off. Alec was immediately on his feet and out in the hall. An eerie silence settled over the house in wake of the crash and the lighted doorway he’d left a little while ago was now dark. 

“Miller?” he called, taking tentative steps toward the dreaded kitchen. “Everything alright, Miller?” He quickened his steps and halted in the doorway. 

The room was a mess. Pots and pans and baking tins littered the tiled floor and nearly all of the cabinets were flung wide open. Automatically, Alec’s hand went for a gun that he’d been relieved of months ago but the weapon was just one of many things that had been taken from him after Sandbrook and Broadchurch. Instead, he swiped a pan off the counter as he edged into the room. It was the best he could do when faced with – 

A toddler?

“Jesus, Miller!” Alec cried as Ellie suddenly emerged from behind the table with Fred in her arms. His hand shook slightly as he carefully replaced the frying pan that he might’ve used to bash their heads in with. He leaned against the countertop, closed his eyes, and took a deep steadying breath. 

“Are you alright?” Ellie asked.

“I should be asking you that,” Alec said gruffly, opening his eyes and straightening up. 

“Sorry, sir,” she apologized, balancing Fred on her hip. “I turned my back on him for a few minutes and he got into the cabinets.” She turned an accusatory glare on her son but he was innocently sucking his thumb and staring at Alec. “I’m trying to scold my son and you’re distracting him.” 

“I think your Mummy’s mad at us,” Alec addressed the child. Fred shyly turned away from him and buried his face into his mother’s neck. Ellie pressed a forgiving kiss to her son’s curls, but Alec didn’t get off so easily. 

“I’ll deal with you later,” Ellie warned him. “I’m going to take him upstairs. Try not to destroy anything while I’m gone.” 

“I think your son covered everything,” Alec observed, smirking slightly. “Though, I’m still trying to figure out how he managed to cut the power.” 

Ellie frowned as Alec demonstrated with the light switch. The kitchen remained cloaked in shadows.

“I must’ve blown a fuse again,” Ellie groaned. “It happens almost every time I use the microwave.” 

“Or the power might’ve simply gone out due to the storm raging outside,” Alec said dryly, recalling the grim weather outlook for the day. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re experiencing unusually high-speed winds and heavy rain.”

“Is that why you’re still here?” Ellie asked, widening her eyes. “I thought you were hanging around for the pleasure of my company.” 

“Actually, I’m waiting for you to invite me to dinner,” Alec quipped. “I’m on a budget and the cooking was excellent the last time.” 

Ellie snorted. 

“That was because Joe cooked. Ever since I burned Christmas dinner and smashed the smoke detector, Joe always cooks when we have guests.”

Her smile wilted and faded from her face. Not even bothering to correct herself, she took Fred and left Alec alone with the mess in the kitchen. 

Alec felt inexplicably awful at seeing her so crestfallen. Cleaning up the kitchen was the least he could do for her after having made that blunder. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so easy to put everything back the way it was before. In fact it was impossible. 

Ellie noticed the instant she stepped back into the kitchen. 

“Oh, my God! What did you do?” she gasped, her jaw dropping.

Alec nervously tugged on his earlobe. 

“I cleaned up, but I couldn’t put everything back in its proper place. So I may have rearranged things a bit.” He cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. 

“Thank you,” she said when she finally collected her jaw. “This is – this is probably the cleanest it’s been since I moved in,” she confessed guiltily. “Do you think you could come back next week and do the same thing? Maybe make this a regular thing?” she inquired hopefully. 

Alec stared at her as if she’d lost her bloody mind. All he’d done was pick up a bit. Besides, this disastrous visit had only proved the fact that they couldn’t go more than ten minutes in each other’s company without getting into some kind of a row. Why would she invite him back so soon?

“I’m kidding,” she reassured him, smiling. She pointed to the doorway. “I’m going to check the fuse box, just in case. Be back in a minute.”

Alec hesitated and then trailed after her. She passed the living room and the bathroom, stopping to open a cupboard at the end of the hall. Alec saw what looked like the electrical panel built into the wall and just out of her reach. Ellie wasn’t exactly short, but she wasn’t nearly as tall as his ex-wife was either. She was about to drag out the step ladder, when Alec easily reached up and over her, undoing the latch so that it swung open to reveal the panel of switches. He felt, rather than saw Ellie startle beside him. He considered it payback for one of the many times she’d nearly given him a heart attack in the past nineteen hours. 

Retrieving his glasses, he surveyed the switches. The two of them were crammed so close in the cupboard that Alec was reminded of the many hours when they’d been forced to work in close quarters at the Broadchurch police department. At the time he’d barely noticed how often they’d rubbed shoulders, or bent their heads together to pore over some evidence, or shared the same air as they bounced theories off one another. It struck him suddenly that he had actually missed this kind of contact. 

“Which one am I looking for?”

Ellie told him. He moved it back into place and then eyed her expectantly. 

“Well?” he asked her, impatiently. “Did it work?” 

“I don’t know. We won’t know unless we run back to the kitchen.”

He waited. She stared hard at the switchboard. When her gaze shifted to his, he raised his eyebrows. 

“Oh! Right, I’ll go!” Flustered, she squeezed past him and hurried away down the hall. He shook his head, wondering if she’d always acted this oddly or if it was just because he hadn’t seen her in months and frankly, they hadn’t spent this much time together since the near all-nighters they’d pulled during the last weeks of the Latimer case. 

“It didn’t work,” she yelled from the kitchen, poking her head out into the hall. 

“Then the wind must have knocked down one of the power lines or something,” he called back, closing up the box and resetting the latch. He shut the door and rejoined her in the kitchen. “I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait it out.” He removed his glasses and tiredly rubbed his eyes.

“ _We_?” she asked bemusedly. “Shouldn’t your car be here by now?”

“It’ll be a while,” Alec grumbled, making a note to call for one as soon as she left the room. He didn’t want to admit that he’d entirely forgotten to make the call even after she nagged him earlier to do it and they’d argued. Ellie squinted at the battery operated clock on the opposite wall as if she suspected that he was lying. 

“Do you think you’ll be here for another hour or so?” She bit her lip and turned to look at him. 

“I suppose, yeah,” Alec grudgingly admitted, kicking himself for having not listened to her that morning, though he’d never tell her that. 

“I just put Fred down for a nap,” she informed him, scrubbing an invisible spot on the countertop he’d just cleaned. “But I still have to return the paperwork and grab a few things, and then I’ll have to get Tom from school…”Ellie trailed off and looked over at him so anxiously that Alec knew that he’d have no choice but to agree to whatever she was about to ask of him. 

“Would you mind staying here and keeping an eye on Fred until I get back?”

“Sure,” he agreed, nodding and refraining from pointing out the irony in her request, since last night she’d nearly killed him when she found him doing the exact same thing.

Ellie sighed in relief and her shoulders relaxed as if a weight had been lifted. Seeing the immediate change in her, Alec wouldn’t have regretted agreeing to it, even if she had asked something more difficult of him. 

“I’ll be back soon, I promise,” she assured him. “And Fred almost always sleeps so you can just watch television or use my laptop or something until I get back and your car comes.” 

“I can’t do _that_ , we’re in the middle of a power outage,” he pointed out again, but she’d already rushed from the room to retrieve her purse and parka. 

“Miller. Miller!” He caught up to her at the door. She was giving him a list of instructions in case Fred woke up, but she was trying to put her boots and parka on at the same time so he only made sense of half of what she was saying. He picked up her purse before she tripped over it again and held it out to her once she’d finally gotten both feet covered and both arms in the sleeves. 

“Thanks,” she said breathlessly, taking it from him. She was just about to run out the door, when he clamped a hand down on her shoulder. 

“They’re calling for severe flooding in areas,” he warned her, turning her around so that she was forced to look at him. She rolled her eyes. 

“I know, _sir_ , I’ve lived here all my life. I think I know by now how to drive in the rain.”

His hand slid from her shoulder, reaching behind her neck to grasp the hood of her jacket. She froze as he gently tugged it up and over her curls. He adjusted the hood with both hands until it fit snugly over her head and clapped her on the shoulder. 

“Drive safely, Ellie,” he told her, releasing her and stepping back. Ellie blinked at him as if he’d just said something more alarming than her first name and then shaking it off, she disappeared out into the storm and slammed the door shut behind her. 

Less than an hour ago he’d longed for a moment’s respite from her, but now in her absence he missed her. He told himself that it was because he was still stranded in this small gloomy house right on the edge of that same beach that still reappeared in his nightmares and probably Ellie’s as well. He’d be fine once he was miles and miles away from this place and sleeping in a bed by himself in a room that he’d rented for the month, but until then he paced throughout the house in the growing shadows. He’d checked on Fred twice and glanced at the clock too many times before he decided to do something or give into his anxiety and empty the packet of pills that was still tucked away in his coat. This time when he circled the kitchen table, he paused in front of the stove. 

He had dinner ready and a wide awake Fred strapped into his highchair by the time Ellie and Tom came in over two hours later. 

“Sorry I’m late,” she apologized, dropping a soggy bag of groceries on the counter. “I got held up at the store and then I had to go on a detour to avoid the roads that were closed due to the flooding.” Alec had to bite back the urge to tell her, I told you so. 

“It was so cool!” Tom gushed excitedly, sitting down next to his younger brother. His hair was wet and he was still wearing his dripping raincoat and mud caked rain boots. “We passed a van parked on the other side of the road that was almost completely underwater!” 

“Tom! Go hang up your raincoat!” Ellie ordered him, worriedly eyeing the growing puddle of muddied water underneath his boots. 

Tom sighed but reluctantly did as he was told. Ellie immediately went over to kiss and greet her youngest son and Alec emptied the bag of groceries before the bag tore. 

“I really am sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have taken that road. But if it wasn’t for that van – “she stopped in mid-sentence, gaping at him. “You made dinner?” 

“I got hungry,” Alec confessed, shrugging. He decided not to remind her that there was really nothing else he could do since the power had yet to come back on. Thankfully, Ellie had a gas stove. 

“What’d you make?” she asked curiously, going over to the stove.

“That looks like cheesy pasta!” Tom exclaimed, coming up behind his mother. “Is it cheesy pasta, Mum? You _never_ make cheesy pasta!”

“I didn’t make it,” Ellie said, looking pointedly at Alec who was studiously putting away the groceries with his back to her. 

“How come _you_ never make cheesy pasta?” Tom pouted. “It’s so good.”

“Because I won’t buy it,” Ellie replied, burning holes into Alec’s back until he closed the fridge and was forced to turn around. “Go wash up for dinner Tom and then set the table.”

“But it’s so dark in here,” Tom complained as he obediently left the kitchen. “I hope the lights come back on soon.” As soon as Tom was safely out of earshot, Ellie rounded on him. 

“Where the hell did you get that?” 

“I got it from your cabinet,” Alec answered, folding his arms to mirror her posture. Ellie was unconvinced. He wasn’t in the mood to fight with her, especially since Tom was going to be back any second. “It was in there, I swear, all the way in the back.” 

Ellie scrutinized him and then loosened her arms, bringing one hand up to her temple.

“Perhaps, I did purchase it. Tom might’ve put it in my basket when I wasn’t paying attention,” she theorized. 

“He does seem to like it,” Alec remarked dryly. Ellie gave him a look and Alec smiled sheepishly. “I had – have a daughter, you know. She used to go crazy for this stuff. This was one of the last things I cooked for her before – before I left,” he finished lamely, rubbing the back of his neck. There was too much pity in Ellie’s eyes. 

“Why don’t you ever –“ 

“Tom’s right,” Alec deliberately interrupted her. “It got dark in here. We’ll need a torch or a –“

“I’ve got some candles,” Ellie offered, dashing off. Alec was grateful she’d allowed him to drop it so easily, even after two years, discussing his daughter or his ex-wife or Sandbrook was still painful.

A few minutes later, Ellie returned with Tom, both of them with arms full of candles of various sizes and lengths. None of them matched. Tom set the table and Ellie dished out the pasta, while Alec went through the candles and rejected most of them. Ellie took over once she finished before he could discard all of them. She leaned close to him and whispered, “You did check the expiration date on the box, right?” 

“What?”

“When we moved in here a couple of months ago the previous tenants left some food in the cabinets. I thought I got all of it, but I might’ve missed a box or Tom might’ve –“ Both of them glanced over their shoulder at Tom who was shoveling it into his mouth as if this was going to be his last meal.

“It’s fine,” Alec said, patting her shoulder. “Pasta lasts for years.”

As soon as he got a chance, he snuck over to the rubbish bin and checked the box. It expired in a week, but Ellie didn’t need to know that. 

He squeezed in between Ellie and Tom, across from Fred. The two candles Ellie selected for the table were safely out of Fred’s reach. Alec was grateful that at least one of the candles was fragrance free, until he made a comment about not being able to identify the scent of the other one. Ellie told him that they were both fragrance free and Alec realized to his horror that what he thought smelt quite nice, wasn’t the candle at all but the woman sitting beside him. He’d never tell her that, though. 

Alec couldn’t remember the last time he ate by candlelight or sat down to dinner like this with small children. But it wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as he anticipated. He kind of liked the way the glow of the candlelight touched each of their faces, and he liked how he was almost forgotten by Ellie as she and Tom laughed when they made Fred giggle, and he loved how when Ellie finally looked at him with that pure happiness on her face that only her children could still give her, she touched his sleeve, and the lights immediately flickered back on. Tom whooped and Alec actually laughed. 

Tom ran out of the kitchen to watch television, with Ellie hollering after him that he better be doing his homework too. Alec collected the dishes and Ellie started to rinse them. 

“You should probably call for a car now,” she suggested, smirking, “Unless you want to sleep in the shower again.” 

Alec smirked back at her and pulled out his mobile, because they both knew that he never made that call earlier and they both knew that he definitely didn’t sleep in the shower last night. As Alec watched her out of the corner of his eye, watching him, he thought that maybe getting stranded here with _her_ hadn’t been so bad after all. 

By the time the car arrived, thirty-five minutes later, Alec and Ellie were arguing again. But Alec went back to his hotel with Ellie’s new number programmed into his mobile and a promise that next time, if there ever was a next time, she would cook for him. Pulling out the remaining pills from his coat, he realized that he survived the day with her, just barely. He looked out the window and smiled slightly. Outside the rain had stopped and the storm was over.


	5. Snowstorm

It was snowing by the time Alec finally found the coffee shop on High Street. He wasn’t surprised that he’d walked by it the first time. People had stopped in the middle of the road and more were pouring out of the shops on either side of the street to exclaim at the unusual sight. Alec shook his head at all the daft individuals around him gaping, and grinning, and giggling like they’d never seen anything so wonderful. Most of them weren’t even dressed appropriately. 

“It’s just snow,” he grumbled, “and it’s freezing.” Hurriedly, he ducked inside the little coffee shop. A wave of warmth and the strong aroma of coffee washed over him as soon as the door swung shut behind him. 

“Alec!” Ellie had stood up, and was obnoxiously calling him by name and waving him over to a table by the window. At least she wasn’t wearing the dreaded orange parka. After Alec had cooked for her and her two sons, Ellie had offered to return the favor, but Ellie’s idea of cooking apparently translated to treating him to a cup of coffee. Alec couldn’t even drink coffee anymore. 

She sat back down as he approached, and Alec was slightly disappointed that she was alone. He’d barely been aware of Fred’s existence when they’d actually worked together, but with Joe gone, Fred was always with her now. 

“Where’s the little one?” Alec asked, unwinding the scarf from his neck. 

“He’s with his grandmother,” Ellie said, smiling stiffly. “Joe’s mother,” she clarified and turned back to watch the spectacle outside. 

Alec dropped into the seat across from her. He hadn’t realized that Ellie had kept in contact with Joe’s family. In fact, he hadn’t even been aware that Joe had other family until now. Come to think of it, he didn’t know much about Ellie’s family besides the sister and that little shit of a nephew of hers that had jeopardized their investigation on bloody twitter. 

“When did it start to snow?” She frowned at the window. Alec wondered how she could’ve possibly missed it, sitting right next to the window with a full view of everyone making fools out of themselves. 

“A little while ago,” Alec replied and he was about to comment on all the idiots outside, when she reached across the table and absentmindedly brushed his hair back from his forehead. He forgot what he was going to say as their eyes met and she abruptly realized what she was doing. Recoiling, she nervously brought her hand back to her own hair.

“You had some snow in your hair,” she explained, but Alec didn’t miss the blush that spread across her cheeks, or the way she nearly tripped over her own purse when she suddenly stood up. “I’ll go get you a coffee,” she offered, so flustered she actually walked away without the purse she just stumbled over. He retrieved ten quid from his own wallet before she noticed at the counter and rushed back. 

“Take it,” he ordered and held it out to her. She was too embarrassed to protest and he probably owed her anyway. 

When she came back, she set something down in front of him that he definitely would’ve never ordered. 

“I can’t drink that,” he said and turned up his nose. 

“Yes, you can. It’s decaf and it’s the healthiest thing they had on the menu. I checked,” she assured him, blowing on her own coffee. The familiar scent wafted toward him and he watched enviously as she drank it. 

“You could at least try it,” Ellie suggested and nudged the cup closer to him. 

“You try it,” Alec said, childishly pushing it back toward her. Ellie removed the lid and sniffed it, but she didn’t dare taste it. Replacing the cap, she handed it back to him.

“It’s not going to kill you.” Ellie rolled her eyes when he refused to accept it. “If I wanted to poison you or make you go into cardiac arrest, don’t you think I already would’ve done it?” 

“You have done it,” he reminded her, though they both knew it hadn’t been her fault. “And you’ve already attempted it numerous times since then.” 

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Ellie cursed and raised the cup to her lips. She took a long swallow and set it back down. “See?” she said and spread her hands out on the table. “That wasn’t so hard. Now, you try,” she challenged him. 

Alec made a face, but he wasn’t about to back down now that she’d practically dared him. It was just as predictably awful as he expected. He grimaced and replaced the cup between them. 

“What the hell was that?” 

“I don’t remember,” Ellie said, scrunching up her nose. “But I’m glad you paid for it and not me,” she added cheekily. She washed the taste out of her mouth with a sip of her own coffee, and Alec was so insanely jealous that he wanted to snatch the cup right out of her hands and drain it himself. 

“Get your own!” Ellie snapped, possessively drawing the cup closer to her chest. Alec realized belatedly that he had unconsciously leaned across the table and actually gone so far as to brush his fingers over hers before she’d pulled away. 

Sulkily, he slumped back in his chair and fiddled with the cup of whatever the hell she’d gotten him. He stared at Ellie Miller and wondered why even though they didn’t quite hate each other anymore, they still couldn’t get through a cup of coffee like the ordinary people that sat around them. 

“You’re staring again,” Ellie observed. 

“I am not,” he denied it. Alec fidgeted in his seat and glanced out the window because she was right, he had been looking at her almost since the moment he’d walked in. He tapped his fingers against the tabletop, knowing that something was off here, but still unsure as to whether he should ask why. It wasn’t any of his business. 

“Look, why don’t you just go over there and get yourself something that you actually want?” she asked him, clearly agitated.

Grunting, he sat up and spotted the writing on the side of the cup for the first time. Someone had messily scrawled a name and a number on the side of the cup in permanent marker. Amused, he handed it back to her. 

“Do you want to hold on to that?” he teased her, smirking. Ellie didn’t find it funny. 

“Go over there and talk to her before I decide to throw that cup back in your face,” she hissed and picked her purse up off the floor. 

“Who?” 

“Alec, I’m not an idiot! You’ve been staring at her since you walked in, and I’m sure she’s been looking at you if she was the one who wrote her number on the side of your cup,” she continued furiously in a hushed voice. 

“What are you talking about?” Alec asked, getting to his feet with her. “Wait, Miller, where are you going?” 

“I’m going to use the restroom,” she said, “You’re going to get a coffee.” She shooed him out of her way and disappeared into the back of the coffee shop before he could puzzle out what was going on. 

Alec stared down at the cup in his hand and then at Ellie’s abandoned coffee cup. He lifted his head and was startled to see that Ellie was in fact right, there was an attractive blonde woman staring directly at him, but it wasn’t the woman working at the counter that Ellie had suspected. 

She smiled when Alec caught her staring at him, but was forced to turn away while the man at the counter took her order. When the woman turned around again to look at him, Alec had already sat back down and was distracted by the group of men and women that had just followed her inside. One of the men called to her familiarly and struck up a conversation with her. Alec noted that she was a lot younger than he’d originally guessed, just by the manner in which the older man was addressing her. Alec suspected that she was a grad student, perhaps an intern or a junior– 

Shit. The girl stole another peek at him and this time the man’s attention was drawn with her. While the girl had no idea who he was, it was immediately obvious by the way the man did a double take and narrowed his eyes that _he_ was no stranger to the former Detective Inspector. 

Perhaps, Alec could’ve slipped right out of the coffee shop with no one the wiser, but he had someone else to worry about now. Someone, who it turned out, chose the worst possible time to march out of the restroom and create a scene. 

“Alec, you didn’t talk to her, did you?” she demanded, completely oblivious to the audience they had even as he stepped in front of her to shield her from view. “God, you’re so stubborn. Do you need me to go over there and ask her out for you, or was she just not good enough for you?” 

“Mill - Ellie,” he corrected himself, grasping her tightly by the arms and leaning in to whisper quickly into her ear, “Listen to me, unless you want to make the bloody front page of the _Daily Mail_ I suggest you leave right now.” 

“What?“ She struggled against him until she spotted the group of reporters waiting at the counter and her eyes widened. 

“Keep your head down and don’t talk to anyone,” he whispered. Releasing her, he asked loudly if she was alright and apologized for running into her. Ellie nodded. Still dazed, she scuttled past him and the press, and vanished out the door. 

Alec breathed a sigh of relief as the door shut behind her and she passed by the window that their table looked out upon. Hurriedly, he took Ellie’s coffee cup and hid it under the table, praying they hadn’t seen them together. His heart wouldn’t slow and he was forced to sit down before the dizziness got to him. Leaning his elbow on the table and resting his forehead in his hand, he tried to calm himself. That had been close, too close.

He should’ve known he wouldn’t get off that easily. When he looked up again, the reporter from the _Daily Mail_ was standing in front of him and one of their photographers had their camera out.

“D.I. Hardy, I thought that was you,” the reporter, whose name Alec couldn’t remember, drawled. “I’ll never forget the worst cop in Britain.” 

“Not anymore, I’m retired,” Alec informed him. 

“Don’t matter to me you’ll always be the worst cop in Britain after what you did to that poor family,” the reporter sneered. Alec bit down on his tongue, so he wouldn’t point out what the press had done to that poor family and give them another reason to put him in the paper. He focused instead on recalling the man’s name. 

“I read that sob story you fed the locals,” the reporter went on, “I don’t believe a bloody word of it,” he said, shaking his head and stepping close enough to crowd Alec. “I didn’t believe a word of that bullshit from the start, but now seeing you here, cozying up with the copper that was married to your Broadchurch killer, I’ve got proof that you lied about Sandbrook and that you lied about Broadchurch too.”

Alec’s head shot up and immediately he recalled the reporter’s name and an ugly history that went along with it. Of course, he’d been at Joe Miller’s trial, the one that he’d specifically told Ellie not to go to for this very reason. But Alec recognized him from somewhere else. Thank god, because the next words that came out of the reporter’s mouth, would’ve forced him to have done something that would’ve gotten one of them killed. 

“I’ll be promoted for getting the scoop on this one. The two worst cops in Britain are having an affair. People just love scandal, you know, and this story just reeks of it. Perhaps, we could do a follow up about how Miller knew all along what her husband was up to, and yet she didn’t do a bloody thing until she decided to move on to the DI that promised to cover up–“ 

“Aright, that’s enough out of you,” Alec snarled and slammed his fist down on the table so hard that he managed to gather the attention of every single person in the coffee shop. He rose to his feet and towered over the shorter man. Grasping the man by the front of his ridiculously puffy jacket, he dragged him toward him. And then before the fat man could even suck in another breath let alone speak, Alec gave him a name that instantly drained all the color out of the reporter’s fleshy face. 

The reporter wrenched himself free from Alec. 

“H-how?” he stammered, breathing almost as hard as Alec was now. 

“I’m the worst cop in Britain, remember?” Alec reminded him, baring his teeth. 

“You have no proof,” the reporter spat, trying to regain his footing. 

Alec lowered his voice to barely above a whisper and threatened, “If you even _think_ about bringing the name Miller into the paper, or even imply _anything_ about her without mentioning her name, I will find enough proof and scandal to make _your_ little secret the front fucking page of every newspaper in the country.”

The reporter stared hard at Alec as if he wanted desperately to call his bluff, but when Alec shoved past him and out the door of the now silent coffee shop, no one dared follow. 

Alec barely made it past the front of the coffee shop before he felt the familiar sense of vertigo and the sharp pain in his chest. Fortunately, there was an alleyway between the next two buildings that he could stumble into. Leaning up against the brick wall, he dug around in his coat until he found the pills. He swallowed them down with difficulty and braced himself against the side of the building. All he could do now was will himself to stay conscious and keep breathing. 

“Are you alright, sir?”

“I’m fine.” Alec opened his eyes to see one of the coffee shop employees with a lighter in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It was the man from behind the counter. Alec straightened up and recognition dawned on the younger man’s face. Dropping his cigarette, he backed right out of the alley and into the street. 

Great, Alec groaned as he rested uncomfortably against the brick wall, he probably went to go get the reporters or worse help. The last thing Alec needed right now was to be arrested for assaulting a reporter or rushed to the hospital in front of said reporter. At least his heart seemed to have resumed a somewhat regular pace…until Ellie Miller suddenly reappeared. Her face was ashen as she rushed into the alleyway.

“I’m fine!” he insisted.

“That’s not what the man from the coffee shop said!” Ellie argued. “I went back to the coffee shop and he ran in and told me that you were out here. What happened?”

“Nothing,” he lied. Ellie smacked him.

“You have a heart condition! What the fuck possessed you to pick a fight with a reporter?” she scolded him, crossing her arms over her chest. Someone had filled her in at least on some of the details. 

“He provoked me,” Alec admitted and added petulantly, “said that I was still the worst cop in Britain.” 

Ellie stared at him for a full minute and then snorted, disbelievingly. 

“He did!” 

“I bet he did,” Ellie agreed with him, “but I’m sure that’s not all he said, and I doubt that something as silly as that could make you completely lose your head and strangle a reporter.”

“You’re right,” Alec conceded, gazing down at her. They both knew that it took a lot to make a man like Alec lose his head entirely, but what Ellie didn’t know was that he’d almost lost it over her. Alec was hoping he could keep it that way. She already had enough problems, he reminded himself, studying her. She was too pale, there were bags beneath her eyes, and she had -

“Is that -?” He pushed himself off the wall so suddenly that Ellie stumbled backwards. She fetched up against the opposite wall of the narrow alleyway and Alec closed in on her. He touched one end of the familiar scarf and looked into her wide eyes. “Miller, you’re wearing _my_ scarf!” 

“’Course I am,” she answered and shoved him away from her. 

“You stole my scarf!” he accused her. She rolled her eyes and took it off for him.

“Well, you did break into my house, so I think we’re even now,” she retorted and threw it back at him. He caught it against his chest. 

“You left it in the coffee shop, moron. Must’ve forgot it after you went off your rocker and tried to throttle the reporter,” she said, shaking her head at him. “You’re not even going to tell me what he said to you, are you?”

Alec ignored her and carelessly wound the scarf around his neck. Ellie absentmindedly reached up again to fix it for him. Her hands lingered on the material and Alec cleared his throat. 

“Stop trying to steal my scarf, Miller.” 

“You tried to steal my coffee,” Ellie grumbled back and turned away from him to hide her embarrassment. 

“We better go our separate ways before that reporter comes back and decides to take a picture of us in an alleyway together,” she predicted, scowling. 

“He’s not coming back,” Alec assured her. 

“You don’t know that,” she countered, facing him. 

“He won’t,” Alec said firmly and he got an odd sense of déjà vu. “I promise,” he vowed. 

“You can’t make that promise. I know he recognized me,” Ellie admitted, biting down on her lip and pretending to be very interested in her boots. “I should’ve listened to you. I shouldn’t have gone to the trial.” 

“Ellie,” he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“You were right.”

“I didn’t want to be,” he told her and dropped his hand from his face. She was staring right back at him. “Ellie, I never wanted you to go to Joe’s trial because I knew what they could do to you and it scared me.” Ellie swallowed hard and Alec softened. He stepped closer and rested a hand on her shoulder. 

“But you had your own reasons for going and I shouldn’t have tried to stop you. I just wish I could’ve stopped those reporters from swarming you after the sentencing,” he confessed. 

“Alec, it wasn’t your fault,” Ellie protested. “I know I said it was, but I was upset.”

“We both were,” Alec agreed, remembering that rainy afternoon ages ago when they’d fought and walked away from each other in the aftermath of Joe Miller’s sentencing. If it hadn’t been for the cowardly Broadchurch police department contacting him to straighten out the Miller divorce paperwork mess, Alec probably never would’ve seen Ellie Miller again.

“But even if I wasn’t able to protect you that day from those vultures,” he went on seriously. “I promise you that as long as I’m still breathing they won’t come after you again.”

Ellie blinked up at him. Then after a long moment, she lifted a hand and tapped his chest, right where his heart was. 

“Then I guess you better start taking care of this,” she admonished him, gently. His heart skipped a beat and he shook her off. 

“Come on, Miller,” he urged, but even as he led the way back out onto High Street, he couldn’t help but mull over her words. 

“Whatever happened with the girl in the coffee shop?” she asked, falling into step beside him. “Did you keep her number?”

It took Alec a moment to figure out what she was talking about. But when he did, suddenly everything clicked into place and Alec wondered how he could have missed it. 

“Oh, I don’t think Terry was interested in me at all,” Alec snorted. 

“What do you mean?” Ellie asked, scrambling to keep up with him.

“Miller, Terry’s the boy’s name,” Alec explained, patiently. “The young man at the counter gave _you_ his number.”

Ellie stopped right in the middle of the road and gaped at him. Chuckling, Alec took her by the elbow to hurry her along before a car mistook them for one of those snow-loving idiots and decided to hit them. He kept his fingers curled around her elbow even after they’d safely crossed the street. Ellie was completely gob smacked. 

“Do you want to go back to the coffee shop?” Alec teased her. “I think he might be getting off work soon-“

Ellie recovered and punched his shoulder. Alec laughed.

“What’s the matter, Miller? Is he not good enough for you?” he parroted back her words from earlier. And even though she tried not to, Ellie smiled. 

“He’s probably not even old enough to date your daughter.”

At the mention of his daughter, Alec choked mid-laugh. He backed up into the storefront to catch his breath and brought Ellie with him. 

“Sorry,” Ellie apologized softly. “I didn’t mean to bring her up.”

“It’s alright.” And it was, he decided. Perhaps, one day, he might tell Ellie about her. And perhaps one day Ellie might tell him about her mother-in-law and they’d actually make it through a cup of coffee like normal people, but not today. He squeezed her arm reassuringly and pushed her gently away. 

“Go get Fred, Miller. I know you’ve been worrying about him the whole time.”

“Not just him,” she said, looking pointedly at him. 

“For the last time, Miller, I’m fine,” Alec sighed. She still seemed unconvinced so he moved away from the store front and closed the short distance between them. Stretching out a hand, he lightly brushed his fingers over her damp curls. Confusion clouded her face and he smiled slightly. 

“You’ve got snow in your hair, Ellie.” 

“So, do you,” she murmured, smiling. Raising a hand, she ran her fingers through his hair. Alec closed his eyes. 

When he opened them, Ellie was walking away from him and the snow was turning into rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, I wrote that in the winter of '14 NOT '15 when I encountered a total of 7 feet of snow in one month, and some people were building TUNNELS to get to work. Wish I could make that up, but I think there's still a patch of snow somewhere in my yard...


	6. Storm Clouds and Fog

The rain stopped and the fog rolled in as the car approached the coastline. Alec was glad that the fog shrouded the ocean from view, it was unsettling, even now after all these months. The driver had kept up a steady stream of inane chatter from the moment Alec got into the car, but he had suddenly ceased complaining about the weather and was waiting expectantly for Alec to give him directions. 

“You took the wrong turn,” Alec realized even as the familiar buildings materialized out of the curling mist on either side of the car. He suppressed a shudder and hastily rerouted the driver away from the town’s ghostly center, but not before the driver started talking again. 

“Say, isn’t this where that kid was murdered?” 

Alec shrugged and hoped the driver would move on and talk to himself about something mundane as he had been for the entirety of the trip. But the driver slapped the steering wheel as if he’d just had an epiphany. 

“Broadchurch! I knew it rang a bell. That kid was found at the bottom of the cliff, got raped, or pushed, or something like that. No, it was the Dad! Wait, was it the one with the copper who was sleeping with-“

“Take that left,” Alec interrupted him, seething. “And let me out.” 

“No, I remember! The boy got killed and the copper was married to the killer. She knew about it all along but never–“

“Stop the car!” Alec ordered, hitting the partition. 

“Alright, _alright_!” The driver took one look back at Alec and jerked the steering wheel so hard that he almost drove them into a telephone pole. Both of them caught their breath as the car safely screeched to a stop within centimeters of it. The driver cursed and Alec got out of the car before he committed a homicide and strangled the man with his bare hands. 

“HEY!” The driver hollered, laying down on his horn and rolling down his window. “You can’t just leave without paying me, bastard! I know who you are now. You worked on the Broadchurch kid’s case with the guilty copper–“

Alec spun around and bent down so that he was on eye level with the driver. The other man shrunk back as Alec grasped the door frame and stuck his head into the car. 

“That copper was proven innocent and that kid’s name was Danny. I hope you at least remember that the next time you disrespect his memory,” Alec spat and tossed some money into the cab, not caring where it landed since the driver didn’t deserve any of it. He stormed off, assured that the driver was far too much of a coward to pursue him even if he had short changed him. 

He walked the rest of the way, only stopping once to take a deep breath and two of his damn pills. It was hard to see in the fog, but he’d spent enough time in this godforsaken town before and after the completion of the case to find Ellie’s house. By the time he reached the familiar little cottage, he was more than ready for a cup of tea and a warmer welcome than the last time he’d knocked on her door. 

Tom threw open the door before he could lift a hand. His hopes were dashed as the boy blocked his path with arms crossed. 

“Hello,” Alec greeted him carefully, not liking the defensive stance of the young lad or the scowl on his face. It reminded him just a little too much of Ellie and that was frightening. 

“Are you dating my Mum?” Tom interrogated him. 

“Sorry?” Alec scratched his ear and tilted his head, because surely he hadn’t heard the boy correctly. 

“You are!” Tom accused him. “You fancy her and you’re taking her out again!” 

“No,” Alec coughed and grasped the railing for support. He should’ve seen this question coming eventually, but he wasn’t prepared for it. “No, I’m not – your Mum and I – no, we’re not dating.” He shook his head and tried to loosen a tie he wasn’t actually wearing. 

“Oh,” Tom said and his shoulders slumped. Alec thought that the boy might’ve been a bit disappointed, probably because if he was anything like his mother he would’ve enjoyed giving Alec a good scolding. He cleared his throat.

“Where’s your Mum, anyway?” he asked, peering over Tom’s shoulder.

“Upstairs.” Tom held the door open for him, but immediately slammed it shut and locked it once Alec was inside. Alec hung up his coat, and the boy reclaimed his former position with his nose pressed to the window overlooking the front stoop. Obviously, he had no intention of leaving his guard post anytime soon. 

“I guess I’ll go make myself a cup of tea…” Alec grumbled and made his way to the kitchen. The kettle was on the stove. Someone had already switched it on, but Alec promptly forgot this observation as soon as he heard Ellie come in behind him. 

“Sorry, I kept you waiting,” Ellie apologized as he turned to face her. “Oh.” She stopped in her tracks when she saw him and Alec caught his breath.

Ellie was dressed up. Alec had assumed that what Ellie had worn to work was what she considered “poshed up” but clearly he’d been mistaken. She looked nice, really nice. Alec raked his eyes over her from head to toe, stunned. 

“You’re wearing jeans,” Ellie gasped, laughing. 

“And you- you’re-“ He gestured vaguely toward her, words failing him. 

“It’s not too much, is it? I hope I’m not overdressed,” Ellie worried, touching her necklace and smoothing down her long skirt. 

“No,” Alec reassured her hastily and gave her another appreciative glance. “It’s – you look –“ He swallowed and casually went to lean back against the counter. His hand found the stove instead and he burnt himself. 

“Fuck,” Alec swore softly, cradling his injured hand to his chest. 

“Oh, my god! Are you alright?” Ellie anxiously rushed over to him in full maternal mode. He stuck his burnt finger into his mouth and tried to shoo her away. 

“’m fine,” he told her around his finger. Ellie rolled her eyes and grasped his forearm. 

“Just let me look at it,” she wheedled and before he could protest, she’d tugged on his arm and pulled his hand from his mouth. He stepped back but she dug her nails into his wrist. “Don’t move! God, you’re worse than my boys,” she sighed.

As she bent her head and moved closer to inspect the burn, Alec breathed in the familiar scent that he’d come to associate with Ellie. He had already guessed it was her shampoo since he noticed it whenever they were together now (and his scarf had smelt a little like her after she wore it) but tonight it seemed like she’d taken a bath in it. He liked it, yes, but it was doing odd things to his head. Coupled with the fact that Ellie was dressed like that – 

Ellie smacked his shoulder and Alec snapped out of it. 

“What?” he asked, blinking. She shook her head and turned on the tap with her free hand.

“I can’t believe I’m actually leaving my kids with you,” she said, testing the water with her palm. 

“Neither can I,” Alec admitted, so honestly that Ellie snorted. “But you did have to bribe me with - Blimey, that’s cold!” he hissed as she suddenly shoved his injured hand under the tap. 

“Of course, it is! You just burned yourself, idiot.”

“I barely burned it!” Alec protested. He tried to withdraw his hand, but Ellie took him by the wrist and held his hand under the freezing cold water again. 

“Give it a minute,” she told him. Her fingers firmly circled his wrist, so he complied. He started counting the seconds in his head, when Ellie spoke again and disrupted him. 

“Alec, are you sure you’re okay?”

Alec glared at her and reached to switch off the tap. But Ellie’s fingers once again covered his own. Something about the lightness of her touch and the way she was looking at him stilled his hand and made him hesitate. 

“I’m fine,” he repeated. 

“You’re fine with this?” she asked softly, confirming that this had very little to do with burning his hand on the stove.

He nodded and switched off the tap.

“I’m not going to keel over in your kitchen if that’s what you’re worried about,” he answered her, trying to keep it light. Instead it came out sounding bitter. 

“You better not,” Ellie warned him. “Or I’ll –“

“You’ll what? Kill me?” Alec finished for her, snorting. “As much as I’d hate to deprive you of that satisfaction, I’m afraid you’ll arrive too late to finish me off.” Ellie glared at him and leaned her hip against the counter.

“I bet you would stop your own heart just to piss me off,” she wagered, scrutinizing him with those brown eyes of hers. “Remind me again why I’m leaving my kids with you.”

“Because your sister’s mad at you and won’t do it,” Alec answered her. “I can’t imagine why,” he drawled. Ellie, to his surprise, blushed and turned from him to grab a dishtowel. 

“She’s my sister,” Ellie grumbled and dried her hands. “She’s always mad at me.”

“How much money is she demanding this time?” Alec wondered aloud. Ellie whipped him with the dishtowel. 

“She didn’t ask me for money,” she protested. Alec scoffed and rubbed the spot where she struck him. Ellie held up her hands in front of her. “I don’t think she’s asked me for more than a hundred quid since Joe left.”

“Then what does she want?”

She didn’t answer him, but her face turned an alarming shade of red. Before either of them could say anything, Tom’s angry voice echoed through the small cottage, carrying all the way from the front door. 

“Shit, not again.” Ellie ran out of the kitchen. Alec followed more slowly, arriving just in time to find Ellie scolding Tom by the staircase and well within earshot of the bloke standing awkwardly in the doorway. Alec was tempted to leave him there but he was too curious. The man introduced himself and Alec shook his hand. 

He was forced to make small talk for less than five minutes, but it was more than enough time for Alec to quench most of his curiosity. He knew everything about the man, except why Ellie would ever want to go on a date with him. Sure, the bloke was friendly enough, and he talked and smiled and laughed a lot, but Alec was already tired of him and the bloke hadn’t batted an eye or questioned Alec once. He reminded him of the cabbie and something more troubling that he couldn’t put his finger on that bothered him. 

When Ellie reemerged, Alec was glad to rid himself of the man. She pulled Alec aside and the man beamed as he checked the scores of the latest match on his mobile. 

“Are you going to be alright with this?” she asked him again in a low voice. “I won’t be out late.” 

“I had - have a daughter,” Alec reminded her, a bit miffed that she still didn’t think he was capable of minding her children, even if his own daughter was a poor example. “I think I can protect them from burglars, stop them from choking, and keep them away from the stove for a few hours.” 

“Yeah, because you did such an excellent job of keeping yourself away from it,” she pointed out and shook her head at him. “Why do I feel like I should be more worried about you?”

“We’ll be fine,” Alec reassured her, frowning at her date as the bloke tucked the mobile away and looked expectantly at Ellie. Her date grinned playfully and tapped his watch. Alec scowled and Ellie laughed. 

“I have to go,” she said, hurrying over to the other man. The man helped her into her coat and it wasn’t until she was hovering on the threshold with the man’s arm around her shoulders that Alec realized who he reminded him of. 

“Oh, and try not to burn down the house, please,” Ellie called back to Alec. 

“Are you sure you left the right person in charge?” the bloke chuckled as he guided her out with all the familiarity as if they’d been dating for years. Alec didn’t catch her response because Ellie pulled the door shut behind them. 

Alec stood for a moment, listening to the muffled sounds of their laughter fade away, before turning and stalking into the other room. There was another window here that overlooked the front and Tom was already sulking as he watched the pair leave. 

“I don’t like him,” Tom informed him, scrunching up his nose. 

“Neither do I,” Alec agreed. 

Tom turned to look at him, surprised and pleased; and Alec knew that Tom had finally made up his mind and decided that he liked Alec. Alec also knew that Tom only hated this bloke because no boy was comfortable with his mother dating someone else, especially someone who looked and acted a little too much like the father that abandoned him. Alec didn’t have an excuse for his instinct to protect Ellie from a strange man that merely wanted to date her, but he already despised the bloke. 

The rational side of his brain told him that it was highly unlikely that the man was a killer or about to fall in love with an eleven-year old and ruin her life by abandoning her. But Alec kept recalling how the man had handled Ellie with all the familiarity of a lover instead of someone she’d only started dating. It made him uncomfortable how his hands had touched her like Joe would’ve, how he had spoken to her as Joe would’ve, how she had looked at him like she would’ve looked at Joe. 

“Are you okay?” Tom asked, breaking him out of his reverie. The pair had already left, but Alec had been gazing at nothing with the curtain bunched in his fist for several minutes. 

“Fine,” he answered the boy, letting the curtain fall back. But he wasn’t.

And that was the moment that Alec Hardy realized that he wasn’t alright with any of this. 

*

Minding the boys was fairly easy after that. Fred howled and cried until Alec sat him on his lap in front of the telly beside his older brother. Tom put on a silly children’s show that kept the toddler distracted and somewhat quieter. And Tom and Alec bonded over their mutual dislike of Ellie’s boyfriend. 

Tom grew more and more anxious about his mother, but once Fred was put to bed, he reclaimed the television and quickly found something that absorbed his attention. Alec was left to worry about Ellie alone as the boy once again fell asleep sprawled out on the sofa. And worry he did. He had found every clock in the house and seriously contemplated calling up one of his former idiot colleagues at the Broadchurch police department to check up on her (because he’d _never_ confess to Ellie that he was worried about her), when he finally realized how ridiculous he was being. 

Sighing, Alec turned off the telly and quietly cleaned up after the boys. The effort left him winded and by the time he made it up the stairs to look in on Fred, he had to lean on the crib to catch his breath. It was strange, but despite Tom being closer in age to his daughter, it was the sight of baby Fred sleeping that triggered the strongest memories of his own daughter. Though, they looked nothing alike, he could almost imagine that he had been transported back in time and that it was his daughter in the crib. Even with all the stress and chaos of having a toddler, those had been happier times when he still had a daughter and a wife that loved him. It made Alec miss his daughter fiercely and hate his ex-wife just a little bit more for turning her against him. But it had been his decision to shield her at whatever cost, even if he hadn’t understood what he was sacrificing at the time. 

Impulsively, Alec pulled out his mobile and scrolled through the contacts until his thumb hovered over his daughter’s name. He stopped himself, because it was late, too late to call and so late that Ellie should’ve been home by now to say goodnight to her children. In that moment, Alec would’ve given anything in the world to be allowed that privilege of kissing his daughter goodnight again, but he hadn’t even gotten a real goodbye. 

“Goodnight,” he murmured, touching Fred’s forehead. The boy didn’t stir like his daughter would’ve and Alec left the nursery with a heavy heart. 

He had entered Ellie’s bedroom before he was aware of what he was doing. The door squeaked on its hinges, reproaching him immediately for breaching her privacy. He’d been in her room before, but only because she’d dragged him inside. This time the door had been shut and the room was empty. Alec flipped the light switch and looked around. 

Something shiny on the night stand caught his attention and he picked it up. 

It was Ellie’s wedding ring. He sat down on the bed, holding it between his thumb and index finger. He remembered vividly the first time he’d held his ex-wife’s wedding ring in his hand, and the last time as he’d picked it up off of the nightstand they’d once shared and wondered when he’d stopped noticing its absence. He’d once been a brilliant detective, but his ex-wife had always been quick to remind him that his exceptional powers of observation rarely extended beyond his occupation. After Sandbrook and Broadchurch and the loss of that occupation, his senses had dulled as if he’d entered a fog. In fact, it seemed that now the only time that he ever felt awake and like himself was when he was with –

“Ellie,” he sighed. He didn’t know what it was about that maddening woman, but she’d gotten under his skin and into his head and stayed there. One of these days, she would give him a heart attack, but he didn’t care anymore. 

Setting the ring back down on the nightstand, he picked up the familiar bottle of sleeping pills. It was heavier in his hands and he knew that this was a new bottle. Frowning, he opened it to find the seal already cracked. She was still taking them, probably on a more regular basis too.

Suddenly, Alec heard the front door open and the murmur of voices. Taking the bottle with him, he grabbed a quilt off the chest and went downstairs to meet her. 

“Alec!” she said in that loud whisper that only someone that was a bit tipsy seemed to use. She ran to meet him, stumbling in her boots and catching at his shirt for balance. Alec caught her against him, just barely managing to maintain their footing. 

“Are you alright?” Alec asked as she stepped back a little unsteadily. He held her in place so he could examine her. She was flushed from the cold, and no doubt the alcohol she’d obviously had. Her eyes were bright and a little glassy, but she wasn’t that drunk. She’d be fine in the morning. 

“I’m fine, more than fine, never better,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “ _Sir_ ,” she added with a giggle.

Someone laughed and Alec dropped his arms back to his sides as Ellie spun around. Her date was back in the doorway holding something out to Ellie. 

“You left your purse in the car,” he chided her playfully. “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d wonder if you did it on purpose.” He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully and Ellie blushed.

“Maybe I did,” Ellie teased him back. Alec cleared his throat loudly and the flirtatious pair blinked at him. 

“I’m just going to call for a car,” he informed them. He went into the living room before he did something stupid like forcibly push Ellie’s date out the front door. 

The boy was still sleeping on the sofa. Alec pulled the quilt down off his shoulder and tossed it over him. Tom stirred and dragged the quilt up closer to his chin. His eyes fluttered open and sleepily focused on Alec. 

“Mum?” he asked groggily. 

“Yeah, she’s home,” Alec whispered, deliberately leaving out the part where Mum brought an idiot home with her. 

Tom nodded and rolled over, instantly asleep again. Alec went to reach for his mobile and discovered that he was still holding Ellie’s sleeping pills. It probably wouldn’t be a brilliant idea for him to leave it out in the living room where Tom or God forbid Fred could find it. He could hear Ellie and her date in the kitchen, probably having a nightcap, and decided to slip upstairs and replace them before Ellie found out he’d been going through her things. 

Alec left the room and immediately skidded to a halt. Ellie and her date weren’t having a nightcap and they weren’t in the kitchen. They were snogging by the bloody front door. Alec’s jaw dropped, but no sound came out. He couldn’t even clear his throat as the man pawed at Ellie and pushed her backwards. Alec’s coat was knocked off its hook by one of the idiot’s flailing beastly limbs and Ellie didn’t even notice. Clenching his fists, Alec took a step toward them, ready to pull the fucking imbecile off of her. But Ellie did it before he could intervene. Panting, she pushed him away, and then just when Alec thought he’d be able to breathe a sigh of relief, she actually smiled at the moron. 

Alec felt a pain in his chest that he wasn’t sure had anything to do with his heart condition. But whatever it was, it was making it hard to breathe. Turning, he stomped up the stairs, not caring if they noticed him or not. 

He went back to Ellie’s room and slammed the bottle of pills down on the nightstand. Then he sat down to catch his breath. What the hell was the matter with him? He was acting like a child. Ellie was a grown and divorced adult who’d been abandoned and betrayed by her ex. After nearly seven months of pure misery she certainly deserved a second chance. So why did he feel the need to go down there and punch her seemingly normal good-natured date in the face. He’d been so numb that he couldn’t even remember if he’d reacted like this to his ex-wife’s affair. Alec took a deep breath and dropped his head into his hands. 

“What the hell was that about?” Ellie hissed, shutting the door behind her. She had sobered up fast, but her face was even more flushed now and her hair was a mess. Alec tried very hard not to think about how it got to be that way, but the images were already burned into his memory. He rubbed his hands over his face, running his hands through his hair. She was at his side in an instant, forcing him to look at her with a rough hand on his shoulder. She paled as he faced her.

“Oh, god, you’re having another one of your attacks!”

Alec hesitated, realizing that this would be the easiest way to excuse his behavior. Ellie didn’t wait for him to confirm or deny it. She ran off, and Alec tried to calm himself. By the time she came back though, he had only succeeded in working himself up again. 

“Here.” Ellie threw his coat at him and handed him a bottle of water. Alec dutifully swallowed down two pills and chased them down with a few sips of water. The two sat in silence for a minute or two before the drug started to kick in and Alec handed her back the water bottle. Ellie drank half of it in one gulp.

“I’m going to go check on the kids, stay there,” she told him. 

Alec rolled his eyes. He leant forward and started poking around her nightstand again. He opened the drawer and pulled out a framed photograph of a grinning Ellie, a younger Tom, and Joe smiling at her on that same beach that still haunted all of them. The happy family was oblivious to the storm clouds building on the horizon, and Alec remembered looking at it during one of his many tours of the Miller’s former home while SOCO was going through it.

“Don’t touch that.” Ellie tugged it out of his hands and shoved it back into the drawer. Her hands were shaking. “You’re supposed to be resting,” she chided him. He ignored her and reached around her for the diamond. 

“You stopped wearing your wedding ring.”

“I’m divorced now,” she reminded him. “Well, almost.” She made a grab for the ring, but Alec held it out of her reach. 

“You still keep it on your nightstand along with a picture of your ex-husband?”

“Habit,” she defended herself, shrugging. “And I loved that picture. Joe gave it to me framed for Christmas one year and we used to have it in our bedroom.” She held out her palm, waiting for him to give the ring back to her. But Alec wasn’t finished. 

“And the sleeping pills, is that just another habit or something that you missed?”

Ellie’s face hardened and her eyes flashed. She crossed her arms over her chest and stepped close enough to him that he could smell the alcohol on her breath and the faintest trace of her shampoo. Alec knew it was time to back off, but he couldn’t. She stooped so that they were on eye level and her warm breath fanned out across his face. 

“You look like hell, and you’re asking me why I take sleeping pills?” 

“You’re avoiding the question,” Alec pointed out stubbornly. 

Ellie sat down on the bed beside him and cupped his face with her hand. The strength in her grip surprised him, as did the almost clinical way she handled him. She tilted his head up towards her, brushing her thumb over the dark shadows he knew he had beneath his eyes. Her lips thinned and her eyes flashed once, only to be replaced with a weariness that Alec was all too familiar with. 

“You’re getting worse again,” she whispered. 

“So, are you,” he retorted. Ellie frowned and dropped her hand from her face. “I meant your nightmares,” he clarified, leaning toward her. She looked up at him, wide-eyed. 

“I never told anyone about them, not even the stupid counselor they forced me to see,” she said, shaking her head. “What makes you think I’m going to talk to you about them?” 

“I worked the same case and I’ve been getting them for a lot longer than you have, Ellie,” Alec said, gazing down at his clenched fists on his thighs. He could feel Ellie’s eyes boring into the side of his head, but when she spoke at last, her eyes had strayed to the nightstand where he’d left the pills. 

“How did you get rid of them?” she asked him. 

“I didn’t,” Alec confessed. He looked up and met her gaze. “With Sandbrook, it was different, I let that family down and the case will always haunt me.” He sucked in a breath and blew it out again. “I thought if I got far enough away from it they’d stop, but then I ended up in Broadchurch…” 

“Well, you certainly solved that case,” Ellie remarked bitterly. 

“Maybe, but it still haunts me just as much as Sandbrook,” Alec admitted. 

“Then why the bloody hell do you keep coming back?” she demanded. 

_For you_. Those two words were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them down and shrugged instead. Ever since the night of the bonfire, Alec had felt a compulsion to look in on Ellie and her sons after the role he played in her tragedy, but not until now did he begin to wonder if there was something more to the bond that they shared. His behavior toward her tonight had alarmed them both, but Alec excused himself by recalling that just driving through the godforsaken town was enough to set him on edge, and the cabbie and Ellie’s new bloke (who acted too much like Joe) had done nothing to set him at ease. 

“Look at us,” Ellie sighed and shifted closer to him on the bed. “Do you think we’ll ever move on?” 

“I suppose everyone does eventually,” Alec mused. The thought struck him hard and as his fists clenched, he was reminded painfully of the ring in his hand. Opening his palm, wordlessly he held it out to her. He felt her stiffen beside him. 

“If you want, I could lose it. That’s what happened to mine,” he told her, failing at humor once again. Even so, Ellie gave him the shadow of a smile as she plucked it from his hand and tossed it into the drawer where she’d replaced the old family photograph. 

She already was moving on, he realized, as she closed that drawer, locking them away for now. And one day, she would move on without him. He grimaced, remembering how she had acted with her date. Ellie touched his shoulder, turning him towards her concerned gaze. 

“You still don’t look well,” she observed. 

“Just tired,” Alec reassured her. 

“You could sleep here,” she offered, hesitantly.

“In the shower?” he teased her. Ellie snorted and leaned against him. Her eyes closed and her head dropped to his shoulder.

“I better call for my car,” he said when she yawned. Ellie nodded but didn’t move.

“Thanks for watching the kids,” she murmured drowsily, “And not burning the house down.”

“Thanks for finally coming home,” Alec quipped.

“I couldn’t wait to come back,” Ellie sighed and surprised him by adding, “I’m never letting my stupid sister force me into going on another date with that boring bloke ever again.”  
Alec bit back a laugh. 

“I don’t care if she refuses to speak to me for the next twenty years, as long as I never have to hear that man talk politics or football again. I hate football and I don’t give a damn about what the Prime Minister is having for breakfast. If he hadn’t been such a bloody good kisser I would’ve walked home and let him keep my purse.”

Alec struggled to maintain a straight face, but he completely lost it when Ellie pulled back, and told him in all seriousness, “I wish you had convinced her coffee shop kid was a better choice, at least he would’ve taken me somewhere cool.”

Excusing himself to use the bathroom, he broke out laughing as soon as the door closed behind him. When he had caught his breath and finished up, he returned to find Ellie sprawled out across the bed and sound asleep. Mindful that she was a light sleeper, Alec tiptoed close to the edge of the bed and gazed down at her. She seemed so much smaller lying like that, and yet she’d still managed to stretch herself out in such a way to commandeer the entirety of the bed as well as most of his coat. Alec shook his head and smiled in spite of himself. 

Gingerly laying a hand on her forearm, he tried to move her and extract his coat from underneath her. Ellie stirred, but instead of waking, she rolled away from him and took the coat with her.

“Miller,” Alec tried again, gently tugging on the other end of the coat. “I need my coat.” Ellie either didn’t hear him or didn’t care because she wrapped the coat more firmly around her and snuggled into the pillows. Moments later, she was snoring. 

Alec sighed and sat down beside her. So much for leaving, he thought as he leaned back against the headboard. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t already done this once before, he told himself, and Ellie had in fact invited him to stay over again before she passed out. But something had changed since the last time they’d shared a bed. Alec pinched the bridge of his nose, knowing that he should just wake her and take the bloody coat and leave. Remembering how she confirmed his suspicions about the nightmares and the sleeping pills, Alec couldn’t bring himself to interrupt her precious slumber, not yet. Sliding down from the headboard, Alec lay on his back and closed his eyes to rest for a moment.

Alec was right on the brink of sleep when Ellie turned over with a shiver and curled herself around him. The warmth and softness of her body so close to his was pleasant and welcoming. Alec sleepily reached around her to pull his coat back up and over her shoulders. Ellie stiffened at his touch, but relaxed as soon as Alec stroked her back reassuringly. Mumbling something that Alec didn’t catch, she burrowed into his side.

“What?” Alec asked groggily. 

“Joe,” she breathed and turned to press a clumsy kiss to his shoulder. 

A shock went through him and Alec was instantly wide awake. His heart started racing and he recoiled from her. He struggled to sit up, but Ellie’s head on his chest weighed him down. 

“No, Ellie, I’m not –“ He stopped himself when Ellie let out a soft whimper that instantly crushed his resolve. Her fingers clutched at his shirt and against his will, Alec found himself sinking back down into the bed. He lifted his arm, allowing Ellie to cuddle closer and tried not to wince when she called him by another name as he wound his arms around her. 

“Just a bad dream, Joe,” Ellie whispered, tightening her hold on Alec and nuzzling his neck. “Just a dream.”

Alec bit down hard on his lip so he wouldn’t curse her fucking ex-husband out loud for shattering her and leaving someone as unworthy as himself to help pick up the bloody pieces. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t dare break the silence, afraid that the sound of his voice might wake her and destroy the fragile illusion she’d created and so desperately needed. Instead he held her and soothingly rubbed her back until her breathing had evened out again and she went limp in his arms. He stayed long after she released him and he was sure she was safe within a dreamless slumber; because just for one night, Alec was willing to let Ellie pretend that Joe was here and that it really was just a bad dream.


	7. When the Storm Broke Them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you all know I'm BLATANTLY IGNORING S2. I had most of this in my head BEFORE I even knew there'd be an S2 and I had a feeling I wouldn't finish it before S2 aired. So, I made the decision when I wrote chapter 7 and 8 in 2014 to create my own names/personalities for characters such as Tess, Dave, Daisy and the Sandbrook victims and killers rather than wait for S2 to come around or try to get my hands on the book and change them. I know it will probably be confusing but they're OCs in this story and I'm sticking with it.

Alec dreamed of drowning and woke gasping for breath. He had fought against the deadly pull of the undertow, the ghosts of the victims of his murder cases, and the angry storming mob of all those that blamed him only to resurface in Broadchurch with Ellie and his daughter standing together on a shore just beyond his reach. He hadn’t made it before the storm came, he never did. 

Shaking, he covered his face with his hand and struck out blindly and instinctively for those little white pills. The waves of his nightmare receded as the roar of the ocean faded into the harsh sound of his own panting. But his hands came up empty.

Something fell off the nightstand and someone shot up behind him in bed. 

_“Are you alright?”_

Hands grabbed for his shoulders and Alec twisted out of their reach. The room swam before him and he squeezed his eyes shut. He pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead and dug his nails into his scalp. Breathe, damn it, just breathe. He felt a second touch at his shoulders, gentler this time, and it helped him relax. He started to count backwards from one hundred, unknowingly matching his breathing to hers.

“ _Alec_!” Ellie’s voice finally broke through somewhere around forty-two. “I’m calling 999 if you don’t answer me!”

“’m alright,” he insisted, opening his eyes to find her a lot closer than he expected. She was kneeling on the bed beside him with her knees pressing against his thigh and her hands grasping his shoulders. “Jus’ a bad dream.” 

“You’re not alright,” Ellie argued. It was dark but Alec knew she was glaring at him. “You’re having another one of your attacks and it’s only been a few hours since the last one!” 

“It was just a bad dream,” he repeated. “Honestly.” Gently, he caught her wrists and removed her hands from his shoulders. He felt the flutter of her pulse beneath his fingers before she freed herself to turn on the bedroom light. Wincing at the sudden brightness, he completely missed the way she had to ball her hands into fists just to stop them from trembling.

“You look awful,” she told him, scowling. 

“Thanks, Miller,” he retorted and rubbed at his watering eyes. “You know that’s almost a compliment compared to what you usually say about me.”

He started to get up and she shoved him back down. 

“ _Miller_!” 

“Don’t make me call 999,” she threatened, looming over him. 

Alec swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure if it was the harsh light, her critical gaze, or her close proximity but it was becoming very hot in the room. After an absurdly long time inspecting him with her eyes, she leaned even closer to gauge his temperature with a hand on his forehead. Alec bit down on his tongue and clenched his hands in the duvet. 

“You feel feverish,” she murmured. His eyes flitted back to hers and he didn’t like what he saw there. She chewed on her lip. “Alec, I’m not a doctor but –“

“No, you’re not! But you’re treating me like I’m a bloody invalid!” Alec snapped. Ellie stepped back from him as if she’d been slapped. Sighing, Alec pinched the bridge of his nose and tried again. “Miller, you’re overreacting. Just because I have a heart condition it doesn’t mean I’m going to drop dead every time I catch my breath.”

“You think I’m an idiot!” she hissed. 

“’Course not,” Alec rushed to reassure her. “But I’m _fine_.”

“You’re not fucking fine!” she snarled and seized him by the arms. “You stopped breathing! I could feel it.” Her fingers flexed as if she desperately wanted to shake him or strangle him. Instead she moved her hand and pressed it against his heart. “I felt it stop before. Remember? I was there when you went down the last time and you nearly fucking died on me and they told me – they said that if it ever happened again–“ Alec flinched at the shrillness of her tone and Ellie stopped talking. She looked down at her hand flat on his chest and then back up at him. Inhaling sharply, she let go and spun away from him. 

He sat up but Ellie moved before he could reach her. She bent down and retrieved the battered alarm clock from the floor. He must’ve knocked it over during his desperate search for the pills. As she replaced it on the nightstand he noticed her pinched white face and that it was only four o’clock in the morning. 

“Miller, shit, I’m sorry,” he sighed.

“It’s fine. It’s survived worst falls and fights. After fifteen years I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s indestructible.” Ellie gave the alarm clock an affectionate pat and Alec realized with some amusement that she had mistaken him. 

“Kind of like you,” he teased and received a blank look. “No matter what happens, you’re indestructible,” he said.

Ellie stared at him for several long seconds before she slumped on the bed beside him. 

“I’m not indestructible,” she disagreed, shaking her head. She turned toward him and confessed, “You broke me with three words.” 

“I didn’t.” Something about the way she was hunched over stopped him mid-protest. 

_It was Joe._

He remembered now. It was one of the hardest things he ever had to do. But he hadn’t been able to lie to her and he couldn’t do it now. No matter how much he desperately wanted to he couldn’t tell her that it was just another bad dream. Why did she always have to remind him of that?

“It’s not your fault,” she said hastily. “I don’t blame you.” 

Alec recalled that they’d had a similar conversation the first time they shared a bed. She had told him then that he hadn’t broken her and even though he’d watched her shatter and held her on that bench he’d refused to believe that she could really be irreparably damaged. That had been months ago. So many things had changed since then, but it didn’t change the fact that she was right. They’d never be able to heal themselves or each other, not really. That wouldn’t stop him from trying. He reached for her before he was even aware of what he was doing. 

“Ellie, look at me,” he urged her, lowering his head so that they were on eyelevel. “You are not broken.” Ellie’s eyes watered.

“Then why do I feel like I am?” she whimpered. 

Alec didn’t have an answer for that, so he instinctively pulled her to him. She gasped at the contact but she didn’t try to push him away. Shocked by his own actions, he started to let go when her arms circled around him and dragged him closer. It felt like they were back on that bench with their back to the bonfires, right at the beginning again. He could almost imagine that he could smell the smoke in the air as everything she ever knew and loved went up in flames again. How could she not break after that? 

“You’re going to get through this,” he soothed her, running a hand down her back and over the familiar texture of his own coat. “It’ll get better, I promise.” Because it had to. Ellie was one of the strongest people he’d ever encountered and she had two sons that needed and depended upon her. She wasn’t like him. She would move beyond this. 

“Not if I lose – God, Alec - always such a bloody hypocrite.“ She shoved him away before he could make any sense of the few disjointed words he’d caught. He released her and she sat back against the headboard as far away from him as possible. She wiped her red rimmed eyes but her tears had stopped.

“I can’t do this,” she whispered, gazing at something beyond him. 

“Yes, you can. You’ve got Fred and Tom,” he reminded her. 

“I can’t raise them alone. Joe – Joe did everything for them,” she admitted, still looking past him.

“You’re a good mother,” Alec reassured her and it wasn’t a lie. He’d had enough time to observe it firsthand. The boys adored her and were adjusting a lot better than he ever expected thanks to her efforts. 

“It’s more than that.” Ellie thrust her fingers through her hair, frustrated. “I have to go back to work and someone’s going to need to watch Fred. Tom will need to go to a different school in the fall. Our lease is up in a month and another tenant is going to move in and I’ve got so much to do and I haven’t had the energy to do anything.” 

She hugged her knees to her chest and suddenly seemed so much smaller and wearier than the woman that had threatened to kill him and nearly succeeded on more than one occasion. Her hair was a mess, the pretty skirt and blouse she slept in were now wrinkled, and his coat looked ridiculous on her. That was the only reason why he was allowing her to wear it. Or at least that’s what he told himself when he fondly touched one of the lapels and straightened it. He couldn’t fight the compulsion to fix the collar either, and of course that naturally led him to brushing back Ellie’s hair from her neck from where it had become trapped and tangled in his coat. He froze when he became aware of what he was doing and that Ellie was too. Withdrawing his hand, he scratched the back of his own neck and cleared his throat. 

“That’s my coat,” he pointed out to her and Ellie actually glanced down and blushed. “If you keep nicking my things, D.S. Miller, I might have to report you.” He smirked. 

“Go ahead, _sir_ ,” Ellie said, recovering quickly. “They all hate you, so they’ll definitely side with me especially when I tell them that you broke into my house and my bedroom.”

“That’s not true, they begged me to come back,” he argued and he was about to remind her of what really happened when he realized that he’d inadvertently revealed something that upset her. All of the color drained out of her face. 

“Ellie,” he began but she held up a hand. 

“I’m tired,” she sighed. 

“I know,” he said softly. “It’s not even four thirty.”

Ellie cracked open an eye and glared at him. “Next time you wake me up at some godforsaken hour you better have coffee,” she warned and then she slipped down from the head board and sprawled out on the bed. 

“You definitely look like you need some,” he agreed, smirking. Ellie swatted at him and he stood up quickly. She was too tired to chase him but he heard something bounce off the wall behind him. 

“You better take those too,” she called out as he picked up the packet of pills she’d thrown at him. “I don’t want to have to explain to the landlord why there’s blood in the kitchen.”

“I _burnt_ my finger on the stove,” he clarified and rolled his eyes. “There was no blood.” 

“And I want to keep it that way. No passing out in the kitchen because your stupid heart decided to give out, you hear me?” 

“Fine.” He stuffed the pills into his pocket. “If I feel the urge to have a heart attack I’ll just pop outside, fair enough?”

Ellie buried her head in a pillow but Alec could still hear her cursing him. Chuckling, he leaned over and switched the light off. 

“Sweet dreams, Ellie,” he whispered in her ear. He lightly touched her forehead just as he had done with Fred and his daughter and perhaps his ex-wife once upon a time. It was a habit he couldn’t quite break, even though he knew that it was futile and that he couldn’t banish her bad dreams. They lived on in her waking hours and he was forced to relive them with her every time he came back here. 

_You broke me with three words._

“I’m sorry,” he apologized again, so softly that he wasn’t sure the words left his lips. His lips ghosted over her hairline with the same softness, barely there at all. And then he stumbled from the room and left her. 

*

He had to get out of here. 

Alec tiptoed downstairs and slipped out the front door, only stopping for a moment to put his shoes back on. He was outside for less than a minute when he realized that there were two glaring mistakes in his master escape plan. First, he was missing his coat. Ellie still had it. He didn’t know why she was wearing it or why he hadn’t asked for it back. He wouldn’t be in this predicament if he had just moved her a couple of inches to the left when she’d first fallen asleep on top of it last night. Not only was it bloody freezing out at four thirty in the morning but he’d left his mobile phone in one of the inner pockets. Unless he planned on walking for miles, he wasn’t going anywhere. It took him another minute before he realized his second mistake. 

The door was locked. He was locked out of the house with no mobile phone and nowhere to go. It was four thirty in the morning and everyone was asleep. He’d be lucky if they heard him even if he did start banging on the door. 

“Damn it!” Alec kicked at the dirt and wished he wasn’t so stupid. This was her fault. Whenever he was around her he stopped thinking straight. Take last night for example. He came all the way down here just to stay with her kids so that she could go out and snog some other bloke. And then when he actually did catch them sucking each other’s faces off like two horny teenagers he threw a tantrum like he was jealous or something. He was not jealous. But he was worried about her. He despised the imbecile her sister had picked out and Ellie didn’t even like him. Or at least he didn’t think she fancied him. Though, there was that troubling admission about him being a good kisser. But he didn’t care, he honestly didn’t care. Ellie was an adult. She could take care of herself and date whoever she wanted. She didn’t need Alec hanging around here to judge her like every other stupid person in this god awful sleepy little town and to remind her of everything she was trying to leave behind. 

_You broke me._

“Fuck!” Alec stopped pacing and dropped down onto the front step with his head in his hands.

It hurt knowing that he broke her. As if he didn’t already feel guilty enough. First Sandbrook and now Broadchurch. On paper he’d been exonerated in the Sandbrook case and he’d solved the Broadchurch case but it had cost him just as much. He just hadn’t realized that until this very moment. 

Lifting his head, he watched the last of the stars go out in the never ending sky. _That man is toxic_. Someone had said that about him once. Out of all the insults and accusations that had been hurled at him, that one had burned. He couldn’t remember who had said it to him, but it had been just after Sandbrook and it had stuck with him. He destroyed anything he came into contact with including Ellie.

_Youbrokemeyoubrokemeyoubrokeme._

Alec picked up a pebble near his shoe and standing, he hurled it with all his might into the emptiness before him. He almost wished that they weren’t in the middle of nowhere just so that he could hear the rock hit something or someone. It would’ve been nice to have that satisfaction. Breathing hard, he leaned back against the front stoop and took out the bloody pills. His ice cold fingers fumbled with the plastic and he dropped one. In his fury, he’d forgotten all about being cold. He didn’t even know how long he’d been standing out there. Cursing, he crushed the little white pill beneath his shoe just as the door opened behind him. 

Alec spun around and faced an equally startled Tom. He probably should’ve had an explanation ready but he was too busy choking down the pill. 

“What are you doing out here?” Tom asked suspiciously. 

“I’m freezing,” Alec answered truthfully. Tom frowned and narrowed his eyes. He looked far too much like Ellie when he did that. Fortunately, he yawned widely and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand which completely ruined the effect. 

“Why don’t you wear a coat? Or come back at a decent hour when people are actually awake?” Tom asked and leaned his full weight against the door just so that he could remain upright. 

“I left my coat here,” he admitted. “I came back to get it,” he lied. 

Tom blinked, and then lazily leaned back so that he could get a look at the coat rack behind him where Alec’s coat should have been if he hadn’t gone into Ellie’s bedroom, and Ellie hadn’t had to get it when he had another one of his attacks because he couldn’t bloody well handle the sight of her with another man. 

“It’s not here,” Tom said, yawning again. “Maybe you left it in the car?”

“It’s here,” Alec said between gritted teeth. He wrapped his arms around himself and tried to ignore the fact that he was shivering so hard now that his teeth may have been chattering. “Your Mum’s probably got it upstairs. Do you think you could run up there and ask her for it?” 

Tom rubbed his eyes again, and if he hadn’t been so tired he probably would’ve questioned it. Instead, he shook his head. 

“I’m not waking her up. You can,” Tom decided and sagged against the door until it opened just wide enough for Alec. “Hurry up! It’s cold, and I don’t want to be around when you wake my Mum up at five in the morning and she gets grumpy.” 

Well, that makes two of us, he mused. Right now, a grumpy Ellie seemed preferable to freezing to death outside. Still, Alec hesitated. She’d already threatened to kill him if she passed out in her kitchen, several times… 

“ _Fine._ You can freeze. I’m going to bed.” Tom rolled his eyes at Alec, stepping back into the warmth of the house.

Alec followed him inside and quietly shut the door behind him. He’d just have to avoid the kitchen and try not to faint. He sat down on the bottom step of the staircase and removed his shoes. His fingers trembled but he already had feeling back in them. The anger from earlier had left him as soon as Tom had opened that door. The house warmed him or maybe-

“Here.” 

A quilt fell into his lap. It was the same quilt Alec had stolen from Ellie’s bedroom for Tom after he’d fallen asleep on the sofa. He looked up to find the boy standing in front of him.

“Thanks, Tom,” he said gratefully and wrapped the quilt around his chilled shoulders. He was still cold but with the quilt the shivering stopped altogether. 

“Are you sick?” 

Alec’s head shot up to find that Tom was still there and he was watching him. 

“I’m feeling better, thank you.” He gave the boy a small reassuring smile and tugged the quilt more closely around himself. Even though he wasn’t completely awake, the boy still looked unconvinced. 

“Do you want me to get my Mum?” Tom asked shyly. 

“No.” Despite everything Alec had said before, he was now just as reluctant to wake Mum as Tom obviously was. “There’s no need to wake Mum and make her grumpy. I’ve got this quilt and I can get my coat when she wakes up.” 

Tom nodded in agreement and eyed the second floor warily as if Mum was up there ready to grump at them. His attention was still fixated overhead where Mum was hopefully sound asleep when he asked the question that turned Alec’s blood to ice again. 

“Are you dying?”

“Who told you that?” Alec demanded. The boy shied away from him and pretended to be interested in the pattern of his socks. Alec’s patience was fraying by the time he finally answered him in a mumble. 

“Aunt Lucy.”

He’d never liked Ellie’s sister before but now he hated her. She was always begging money off of Ellie, and she’d put her up to that stupid date with that insufferable prig, and now here she was telling lies to her nephew and probably the whole damn town too. 

“Is it true?”

Tom’s voice jarred him out his mental rant against Ellie’s good for nothing sister. 

“What?” 

“Is your heart gonna stop working soon?” Tom repeated himself slowly, stammering over the words a bit as if he knew the gravity of them. Alec certainly did. Lucy didn’t know exactly what Alec’s condition was but she hadn’t been that far off from the truth.

“It might,” Alec admitted at last. “Or it might not. My heart condition’s complicated, Tom.”

God, he wasn’t making sense. He honestly didn’t want to lie to Tom but there were some things that children couldn’t understand and some things that he didn’t even understand when it came to his condition. The last time he’d seen a doctor he’d been forced to resign his position as Broadchurch’s Detective Inspector. Everything had quieted down after that, and with the absence of the daily stress of that job, and no one watching him too closely, it had been relatively easy to dodge his cardiologist’s phone calls and convince himself that the problem had gone away. 

But Ellie was right, it was becoming blatantly obvious that it hadn’t and it wouldn’t go away. 

“Aunt Lucy thinks you’ll be dead by Christmas,” Tom blurted out. 

“Your Aunt Lucy isn’t a medical expert, last I checked,” he pointed out snidely. As soon as he got out of here he was going to pay that woman a visit and have some words with her. 

Tom shrugged and fidgeted with a string that he’d pulled loose from one of his sleeves. He wound it around and around his finger until it snapped. 

“If it wasn’t true than why did it make Mum cry?”

Alec’s heart broke for Ellie and for her son. It would’ve been so much easier if he could blame everything on that undeserving sister of Ellie’s, but Alec knew now that he was the only one at fault here. Perhaps this was something he could fix, or at least he could try.

He slid the quilt from his shoulders and stood.

“Tom,” he said, gently laying his hands on the boy’s thin shoulders. Tom couldn’t look him in the eye. Alec would have to tread carefully.

“Your Aunt Lucy’s right, one day my heart will stop working,” he confessed and the boy sniffled and wiped his nose. Alec chose his words with care. “But Tom, no one can tell when someone’s heart is going to stop, not even the cardiologists. Although sometimes I think that they like to pretend that they can just so that I’ll listen to them when they tell me I can’t eat or drink anything unless it’s green and tastes horrible.” He gave a long suffering sigh and Tom rewarded him with the palest of smiles. 

“Eventually everyone’s heart stops working, Tom. There’s only so much that doctors and science and medicine can do. Mine might stop a little bit earlier, that’s all.” Tom nodded as if this made sense and Alec took a deep steadying breath before he continued. “If I do go, I need you to promise me something.” Tom sniffed and Alec crouched down so that they were on eyelevel. “I need you to do exactly what you’ve been doing for the past few months and probably long before that,” he added, inwardly smiling at the memory of the boy glowering in the doorway at him, “I need you to promise me that you’re always going to be there for your mother.”

He felt the boy’s shoulders straighten beneath his hands as his serious eyes met his directly and he had to fight back the urge to smile. Ellie had every right to be proud of her son. 

“That’s all I ask. Can you do that for her?” he pleaded, despite already knowing Tom would do it. 

“Yeah,” Tom vowed with all the solemnity a twelve year old boy could manage. 

“Thank you. You’re a good lad, Tom,” Alec whispered and released the boy’s shoulders along with a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He stepped back from the boy and straightened up, feeling the tension draining from his body. 

“I’m always gonna take care of her,” Tom promised him gravely. 

“I know,” Alec replied. He took the quilt and draped it around Tom’s shoulders like a super hero’s cape. After all he must have some super human strength, it took a lot of bravery and courage to not break after losing your best friend and your father in the same year and under such terrible traumatic circumstances. “Try and get some rest, Tom.”

“Don’t wake my Mom,” Tom threatened him as he passed on his way up the stairs. It appeared that he was in fact taking his protector role extremely serious. Halfway up the footsteps stopped, and Alec turned to look at him. 

“Unless you get sick again,” Tom added guiltily. 

“I’m fine,” he reassured the boy. “But I’d feel better if you didn’t repeat any of this to your mother. I don’t want her to worry.”

“Okay,” Tom agreed with another yawn. He was almost to the top when he stopped again and looked back at Alec over his shoulder. 

“You should tell her,” Tom said, suddenly looking very uncomfortable. 

“Tell her what?” Alec asked, bemused. Tom screwed up his face and wrinkled his nose.

“I don’t know,” the boy sighed at last, “But you could start by telling her that you worry about her and that you _care_.”

Now, it was Alec’s turn to blush and awkwardly tug at his earlobe. 

“Might help if you told her you don’t like her new boyfriend too,” Tom suggested hopefully.

Alec laughed. Tom smiled sheepishly and shuffled off to bed. It wasn’t until later that Alec finally understood what Ellie’s son had told him and by then it was too late. 

Outside the sun was rising, but Alec and Ellie were still very much in the dark.


	8. The Storm Inside of Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a friendly reminder, I'm using OCs in place of Tess, Dave, Daisy etc. I'm also taking a lot of artistic liberties with Alec's past (Sandbrook, his divorce, his relationship with his daughter, etc.) because I wrote most of this several months before S2 aired and I did not read the book/short story.

By the time the sun came up and Ellie reemerged from the bedroom, Alec had brought Fred downstairs and had him strapped into his highchair in the kitchen. When Ellie found them, he was telling Fred a story using the pictures in Tom’s Maths textbook that sounded like a disastrous literary mash up of every fairytale in existence. 

“Well,” Ellie had startled him. “I don’t think we’ve ever heard that one before, have we Fred?” she asked her son. She kept her voice cheerful, but she was probably wondering if her youngest son was going to need more therapy after that convoluted tale. 

“Sorry,” Alec apologized. “Fred wanted a story and this was the only book I could find.” He decided not to inform Ellie that he suspected her eldest son was hiding books in kitchen appliances (this one was in the microwave) to get out of doing his homework. He’d have to talk to Tom later.

“You could have woken me,” Ellie said gruffly, though she was all smiles and sunshine for her son. Alec hid a smile of his own, remembering how Tom had in fact threatened him against this idea. 

“I didn’t make coffee,” he pointed out guiltily. 

“I didn’t expect you to,” she laughed and kissed her son’s cheek. 

Alec watched them together and wondered if Joe had always been up first with Fred and the coffee ready for her or if they’d taken turns. He imagined that sometimes she probably forgot and wondered why the coffee wasn’t ready or turned to speak to him the way she’d turned toward Alec in her sleep the night before. But Joe was gone and nothing was ever going to quite fill that hole in her life. No matter how hard she tried. 

“Coffee?” she asked him. 

“No, thank you,” he said, rubbing his chest. 

“You can’t drink coffee,” Ellie recalled. She bit her lip and opened one of the upper cabinets. “I think I’ve got some of that decaf tea in here…” She stood on tip toe and stretched her arms to dredge it up from somewhere in the far back. 

“I’ll get it,” Alec offered and impatiently shouldered her aside. Instead of stepping away, Ellie leaned against the counter and watched him as he dug through a jar containing several different types of tea, most of which didn’t appeal to anyone.

“You really should get the surgery,” she said. 

“Trying to get rid of me, Miller?” Alec spared her a glare and then redirected his attention to some kind of purple herbal tea that was supposed to have mythical powers according to the package. 

“I’m serious,” she emphasized, taking the jar and the magical purple tea from him. 

“So, am I. You’re trying to poison me and I’m not drinking _that_.” Grasping the ominous purple package between his index finger and thumb as if it really were potent, he dropped it back into the jar. 

“Alec, you’re acting like a child,” she sighed. 

“Miller, no one in their right mind would ever drink something with mysterious healing powers, especially if it’s that particular shade of fuchsia,” he argued, deliberately avoiding the subject. 

“I’m talking about the surgery!” Ellie said, slamming the jar down on the counter behind her. Alec flinched and Fred started to cry. 

Ellie swept away from him to soothe her son. Alec was instantly forgotten as she rushed around the kitchen until she had her son’s breakfast prepared and in front of him. Ellie’s coffee finished brewing and Alec finally selected a green herbal tea that didn’t look like it was too poisonous. Fred quieted as soon as he started eating. Alec poured Ellie’s coffee and handed it to her before taking the seat beside her with his tea. 

“I’m not finished with you,” she growled as she sipped her coffee. 

“I know.” He nodded and winced at the first sip of the tea. He’d never get used to drinking this horrid stuff. It looked like piss in a cup, tasted like it too. 

“If you won’t listen to me, than perhaps you’ll do it for Keira,” she suggested. Alec shook his head, still studying his tea. 

“Keira doesn’t know. I don’t even think my ex –“ Alec lowered his mug and stared hard at Ellie. Even after all the time they’d spent together, while they were working together and particularly as they became friendlier in the aftermath, Alec was one hundred percent certain of one thing he never mentioned. “I never told you my daughter’s name.” 

“You didn’t have to,” Ellie said, smiling ruefully at him over the rim of her coffee mug. “Alec, I know you made up that story for Fred on the spot. It didn’t take a genius to realize who Princess Keira was.”

Alec pushed the tea away from him and slumped back in his chair. Apparently, he was far more transparent than he thought. He ran his fingers through his hair. 

“The other princesses,” Ellie began softly, “the girls that Keira rescues at the end...”

“Yes,” Alec sighed, closing his eyes. “Molly and Phoebe were the names of the two girls that died at Sandbrook.” He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. For over two years he’d kept everything so carefully hidden that sometimes he could forget the names, even if the pain never left him, and all it took was one silly fairytale he made up on the spot and suddenly Ellie fucking Miller had cracked him wide open. The true story – an abbreviated censored version of it – poured out of him before he could stop himself. 

“Our entire case depended on a piece of evidence, a pendant that would link the killer to one of the girls. My – one of my detectives had it in her car but she stopped on the way home for a drink. Her car was broken into while she was inside the bar and the evidence was stolen along with everything else. Without that crucial piece of evidence the case fell apart. We couldn’t solve it and I doubt they ever will.” He swallowed hard.

“Alec.” 

He shook his head and without opening his eyes, carried on.

“The detective whose car was broken into – she was married and she was having an affair. No one knew and I wanted to keep it that way.” His heart clenched, but he forced himself to continue. “I took the blame for it, because I should’ve known and it was my fault. I didn’t want anyone to know least of all her daughter or the families because – because she was my wife.” A shudder went through him and he sucked in another deep breath, this one harder than the last. But as he let it out again, he felt a tiny bit of the tension leave his body. 

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. He had to blink several times before he was sure that his eyes were clear. His throat was tight and there was a part of him that wanted to throw his cup with that terrible piss colored tea against the walls of a house that Ellie had resigned herself to living in, even if she’d never call it home. At least she had rented herself a house, instead of migrating from hotel room to hotel room as he did every few months. He never stayed in one place for long because he was afraid that if he did the painful past, the bleak present, and the frightening future would swallow him whole. In fact the only place he returned to with an alarming regularity was Broadchurch. 

“ _Alec_.” 

Alec hadn’t heard her move, but now Ellie was right beside him. Her chair was pushed as close to his as the table would allow and she was half out of it, bent toward him so that their knees touched and her hand covered his own. She gave his fingers a comforting squeeze and gazed up at him with eyes that shone with unshed tears. 

“I thought I was doing the right thing, shielding Keira and her mother, but the press and the families…” He passed a heavy hand over his face. “God, it was awful what they did to those poor families and I just walked away from it all and never looked back.”

“Alec, you can’t keep blaming yourself or it’ll kill you,” she sighed and released his hand to push his hair back from his forehead. 

_It already is killing me_ , he thought to himself, and she knew it too. He shut his eyes as Ellie gently combed her fingers through his hair until she had fixed it. 

“I think you should talk to your daughter,” she said at last. He opened his eyes and frowned down at his now cold tea.

“She won’t talk to me. The last thing she said to me was “I hate you!”” Alec admitted miserably, grimacing at the memory. “I still leave her a voicemail every week just in case she changes her mind.”

Ellie was obviously shocked and didn’t know what to say, but fortunately Fred chose this exact moment to spill most of his breakfast with a gleeful shriek. She shot to her feet, forgetting how close their chairs were, and tripped over one of Alec’s long legs before he could move it. He tried to catch her, she latched onto him, and somehow she wound up half seated in his lap. 

“I’m sorry.” Ellie apologized at the same time Alec did. Fred clapped his hands and giggled at the mess he’d made. It was like the little monster knew exactly what he’d done. Ellie must have been thinking the same thing because as soon as their eyes met she started laughing. She hid her face behind her hands which merely added to Fred and Alec’s amusement.

“Stop it!” Ellie tried to scold Alec and her son between giggles. Fred squealed and happily knocked something else off his tray now that he had an audience. “You’re only encouraging him!” 

“I’m encouraging him?” Alec sniggered, grabbing her hands and pulling them away from her face. “He’s your son and you’re the one that can’t stop laughing.”

“Shut up! You’re making me laugh!” Ellie attempted to free her hands and smack Alec at the same time. The only thing she succeeded in doing was burying her face in his shirt to muffle her laughter. As she wriggled closer, Alec became aware of her position in his lap in a manner that checked their laughter almost instantly. 

“What’s so funny?”

Ellie leapt up from Alec’s lap and spun to face her sleepy son standing in the doorway. Alec turned his back on her and reached for the terrible tea with forlorn hope that it might calm him down. It wasn’t soothing but it was just disgusting enough to serve the purpose. 

“Your brother made a mess of his breakfast,” Ellie explained, busying herself with Fred and cleaning up his mess. 

“He always makes a mess,” Tom complained and flopped down into the chair beside Alec. The boy yawned and put his head down on the table. 

“What did you boys do last night?” Ellie asked, eyeing her eldest with some concern and shooting a suspicious look at Alec.

“We waited for you,” Tom answered, reluctantly picking his head up off the table to frown at his mother. “I planned to stay up but you were out late, really late.” Alec had to hide a smile.

“I’m sorry Tom that I didn’t get back in time to say goodnight to you.” Ellie ruffled her son’s hair and put down a bowl of cereal in front of him. “Saturday I’ll make sure we’re back earlier.” Alec frowned and Tom let out a groan. 

“But Mum, Fred and I hate him!” Tom whined. Alec thought the lad made a compelling argument. 

“You haven’t even met him,” Ellie snorted. Tom opened his mouth to protest but Ellie cut him off. “Interrogating him at the front door doesn’t count. That was very impolite and it better not happen again, is that understood?” She propped her hands on her hips and glared down at her son.

“Fine! But next time I’m telling him you’re already married and that Alec has a gun,” Tom announced. He took his cereal and stalked out of the room, leaving his mother speechless. 

“He’s right, you know,” Alec conceded sheepishly, earning himself a stunned look from Ellie. “Not about the gun, but you are – well - you were married for fourteen years.“ 

“To a murderer, yes, thank you for the reminder, sir,” Ellie spat. “And if it’s alright with you and everyone else in this damn town I’d like to move on from that.” She pulled out her chair and reclaimed the seat beside him.

Alec watched her out of the corner of her eye as she tried to gulp down what must have been cold coffee. After several long minutes of silence only broken by the occasional word from Fred, Alec decided to broach the subject.

“So, Saturday, eh?”

Ellie nodded.

“He texted me this morning and since we had a lovely time-“

He snorted into his tea. Ellie put down her mug and folded her arms on the tabletop. 

“What’s so funny?” she demanded. 

“That’s not what you said last night,” he chuckled. 

Ellie’s face flushed and her eyes lowered to her coffee. “I may have had one too many,” she admitted, “But _I_ thought the date went fairly well.” She avoided his eye as she picked up the mug again. “I might even tell my sister he’s my new boyfriend.” 

Alec choked on his tea and Ellie slammed her coffee mug down. 

“What is your problem?” 

“You’re a bloody liar,” he gasped, leveling a finger at her. Much to his satisfaction, Ellie blushed a violent shade of red. “You’re only going out with him because your sister put you up to it!”

“Oh, alright!” she burst out, tossing up her hands. “It’s true. It was awful! He took me to this dreadful pub and he was as dumb as a post. Is that what you wanted to hear?” 

“And yet you still invited him back to the house?” Alec chortled, unable to resist pushing her a little bit further. Ellie was fuming but instead of exploding she actually considered the question. 

“Well, I was a bit drunk, but I thought he was rather handsome and he was a good kisser. Maybe I would’ve finally made a proper night of it if there wasn’t a man already in my bedroom,” she said, glaring at him.

“Sorry, Tom took the sofa and I was tired,” he apologized, hastily draining his tea so she wouldn’t see how he wasn’t really sorry at all. Ellie wasn’t fooled. “Oh, come on, you can do better than that imbecile,” he argued. 

“Yeah,” she agreed glumly, finishing off her own coffee. “Maybe I’ll see if coffee shop boy or Dirty Brian’s still interested.” 

Alec made a face and Ellie almost smiled. A frown settled over her features as she gazed sadly and longingly at the empty chair across from them. Alec knew that more than anything she wished it could be filled again and that everything could go back to the way it was before that dreadful day when they found Danny. 

“It’ll get better,” Alec reassured her for the second time that morning. 

“Will it?” Ellie asked bitterly. 

“It’ll get easier,” Alec rectified. “It takes time but it’ll fade.”

“There’s a sick and twisted part of me that thinks I deserve this because I didn’t see it; because if I had maybe Danny would be alive,” she said staring at the empty chair and the ghost that sat in it that only the two of them could see. “But even though I’m still struggling with it every day and every night I’m not going to let that guilt kill me.”

She turned suddenly to look at him.

“And I don’t think you should either,” she challenged him.

Alec narrowed his eyes, puzzling over everything she’d said and more importantly what she _hadn’t_ said. And that’s when it struck him like a lightening bolt, igniting a fire he hadn’t even realized he still had in him. 

“You think that I’m killing myself,” he stated slowly. Ellie didn’t even bother to deny it.

“It’s been eight months since your last heart attack and you’ve had multiple incidents since then that I’ve witnessed. You’re not getting better and you haven’t even considered getting the surgery.”

“Why should I?” Alec shot back.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ellie snapped, throwing up her hands. “Maybe because your next attack could be your last? Don’t you get tired of living this way? Don’t you _want_ to see your daughter grow up?”

“Of course I do!” he said, striking the table with enough force to rattle his tea cup. “But even if I did manage to live to be a hundred she doesn’t want to see me.”

“Have you even tried going to see her?” Ellie interrogated him, unwilling to let go. 

“I call her-“

“I’m not talking about some bloody voicemail that anyone can leave!” Ellie cut in, eyes blazing. “I’m talking about looking her in the eye and telling her that even though you love her you’re giving up.”

“I’m not giving up! I don’t have a choice!” Alec snarled and unleashed his fury. “God, Miller, do you have any idea how lucky you are? Despite what happened, you still have full custody of both those children. You get to see them every morning when you wake up and every night before you go to sleep. My ex-wife won’t let me within five kilometers of Keira because the press showed up at her school during Sandbrook. And even though I hate her for it that was one of the best decisions she made for Keira.”

The anger that had licked at his insides was quenched and Alec was left wearier and emptier in the aftermath. He couldn’t face Ellie so he turned toward Fred instead. It appeared the toddler was too startled to cry. He supposed that Ellie and Joe didn’t fight, at least not nearly as often as Alec did with everyone that crossed his path, and certainly not in front of their young son. 

“Trust me, Keira’s better off without me,” he sighed. “Even if I did have the surgery, the last doctor I saw said it was unlikely I’d survive it.”

The silence was shattered as Fred dropped the toy Ellie had given him to play with, but this time no one laughed. Ellie automatically bent down to retrieve it but Alec was closer. He stood up and offered it to Fred, who blinked up at him and then broke into a toothy grin. Alec couldn’t help smiling back at him.

“At least someone likes me,” he teased. He glanced over at Ellie to find her ashen faced.

“What? What is it?” he asked confused. 

Ellie made a strangled sound in the back of her throat and then she flung her arms around his neck. Alec froze, at a complete loss as to what he had done or said this time. One second she was trying to tear him apart verbally, questioning not only his health and life decisions but his role as a father, and the next… She shuddered and he heard that muffled gasp that was becoming all too familiar to him. 

“Oh, Ellie,” he whispered, his heart breaking all over again. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly. Over her shoulder, he spotted Fred watching them both with curious brown eyes. Sometimes he forgot how strong she had to be for the two boys that depended on her. He cupped the back of her head and quietly told her to pull herself together. 

“Sorry,” she apologized, hiccupping. “I promise I’ll stop now,” she swore and dried her eyes with her sleeves. 

He pulled out his chair and lowered her into it. Crouching on the floor beside her, he laid his hand on her elbow. And he felt a sense of déjà vu as she looked at him through teary but focused eyes. 

“You’re a good father,” she told him, surprising him. 

“I’m not –“he stammered, but his voice died when he saw the stubborn determination and that serious steadiness in her bright eyes and the firm set of her mouth. 

“You are,” she repeated vehemently. “I know that I’ve never seen you with her, and you hardly ever talk about her, but I know now how much you love that little girl.”

Alec dropped his hand from her elbow, completely floored by how certain she seemed of this fact, even though today was the first time he had fully acknowledged his daughter Keira’s existence. Why was she so willing to believe it? What did she see in him?

“Alec, you gave up everything for her,” Ellie continued. “Today you told me how you jeopardized an investigation, put your career on the line, and took the full blame for something that you didn’t do. You did all of that and walked away from Keira because you thought that was what was best for her. It takes a brave man to do that.”

“Or a cowardly one,” he countered softly. 

Ellie shook her head and they both turned to check on Fred. The toddler had quickly lost interest in them and was now playing with the toy Alec had rescued from the floor. 

Alec felt Ellie’s hands on his shoulders, forcing him to face her. Her eyes were dry now but when she spoke her voice was pained and hardly above an urgent whisper. 

“Listen to me. I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone.”

Ellie nervously stole a peek at the doorway, swallowed hard, and then removed her hands from his shoulders and twisted them in her lap. The words flowed out of her so fast and soft that Alec had to lean closer so that he could hear them. 

“After the trial, I lost it. I let myself fall apart. I’m still trying to piece my life together, but during those two months before - before you and those stupid divorce papers I didn’t sign, I was a wreck. My mother-in-law - _ex_ -mother-in-law - wanted to take Tom and Fred until I could get back on my feet. I hated her for that but then my sister and Ollie offered too, and I realized that they weren’t doing it out of spite but out of genuine concern. And even though neither of those options were ideal for Fred and Tom, I knew that even if there had been somewhere better for them to go until the worse was over and I could heal, I wouldn’t have been strong enough to let them go.”

Alec opened his mouth to apologize or contradict her but no sound came out. He was struck dumb. They’d fought at the trial and he’d pushed her too hard, he should have realized sooner but he thought she was unbreakable. How had he missed it? Why didn’t she hate him for hurting her like that? Ellie cleared her throat.

“Alec, I know that leaving Keira literally broke your heart but you did it out of love. And I know that it was one of the hardest things you ever had to do because I couldn’t have done it, even if it was what was best for my child.” Ellie glanced back at Fred still wrapped up in his own little world with that softness she reserved solely for her children. She absentmindedly smiled at her son and then returned to Alec. 

“I understand now,” Ellie said and her smile faded. “But I still think that Keira deserves to understand that as well. She’s your daughter and she should know the truth, and everything that you did for her, and how much you love her especially now – now that you’re – well -“ she abruptly stopped, suddenly at a loss for words as well. 

There were some things that hurt more when they had to be left unsaid. 

Alec sank to his knees before her, breathing hard as if he’d just run a marathon. He shook off Ellie’s outstretched hand and caught at the edge of the table instead. 

“Are you-?”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not fine,” he admitted for the first time.

“I have your coat,” Ellie realized and started to get up but Alec stood up to stop her. 

“I’ve already got them,” he said roughly. “But I don’t need them. I need you – to sit down and just listen.” She complied immediately and Alec was left standing in front of her, fumbling for words in lieu of a row he desperately wanted. 

“That first time I showed up here, the night of the storm –“ Alec tried to collect his thoughts but it all boiled down to one question. “After everything I said to you, after I hurt you, why didn’t you throw me out into the storm?” Ellie blinked at him, obviously not expecting that, but she recovered quickly. 

“I thought about it,” Ellie confessed. “But contrary to what the rest of this county thinks, despite sleeping next to one, I’m not a horribly evil human being.” 

“You did threaten to kill me,” Alec recalled.

“I thought about that too,” Ellie agreed, pretending to seriously consider it. “But I could never do it. I would’ve been depriving Britain of its Worst Cop and I didn’t think I was ready to have that honor bestowed upon me,” she joked. 

“Nah, I don’t think you would’ve had to worry about that honor. They probably would’ve knighted you for getting rid of me,” he teased. His attempt at humor fell flat along with Ellie’s face. The room instantly sobered and they both realized that the truth was going to come out whether they wanted it to or not. 

“ _Fine_! I confess, I hated you,” Ellie blurted out, breaking the silence. “I wish I could blame it all on the trial and Joe but there was a little voice in my head that blamed you.” She waved him off as if he was going to protest. “I know it wasn’t your fault but in a way it was easier to focus on you than Joe. I hated you for most of the time we worked together. You weren’t the father my children, you weren’t married to me for nearly fourteen years, and you weren’t the one sleeping next to me while I tried to solve a crime that was in my bed the entire time.” 

A twisted part of Alec relished the confession and was satisfied that she was angry with him just like everyone else. He knew it was right, that he deserved it, that he had been waiting for it but it still felt as if Ellie had stabbed him with a knife. And she wasn’t finished yet. 

“I was furious when I found you in Fred’s bedroom and maybe I would’ve killed you if you hadn’t keeled over. But then a funny thing happened. I talked to you.”

She laughed at his expression. 

“I know it sounds silly. But one second we were arguing and then the next I was telling you things that I hadn’t told my sister or the counselor they forced me to see. Maybe I was just lonely and tired of shutting everyone out, but when you showed up. I don’t know. Something changed.” A ghost of a smile crossed her face. 

“It doesn’t make any sense but I think you showing up in the middle of that storm saved me somehow…” she trailed off. 

It made sense, more sense than it should have. That night something had changed for Alec too. He had felt responsible for her loss right from the beginning and had vowed on that bench that he would watch out for her and the boys, but when they’d agreed that they could sleep in the same bed everything had changed. Despite the storm raging around them and a woman beside him for the first time in years, Alec had slept better than he had since Sandbrook. And even though he hated the stupid never ending sky, the sand, the ocean, the cliffs, and the people and how Ellie hid from them in her cottage on the very edge of that awful little town, he kept coming back to Broadchurch not out of some moral obligation, but because he _wanted_ to see Fred and Tom and more importantly he _needed_ to see Ellie. 

“You helped me, Alec,” Ellie said and scooted closer to take his hands in hers. “Now that I’ve told you all that maybe you’ll be able to understand why I was pushing you to get the surgery, nattering on about forgiveness, and trying to force you to reconcile with your daughter. I understand now that it’s a lot more complicated than I thought, but I was only trying to help.”

She squeezed his hands and he helped her to her feet. He freed his hands but didn’t step back, despite how closely they now stood. Searching his eyes, she stretched out her hand and grazed the side of his face. 

“You deserve to be happy, Alec. I want you to be happy.” 

Alec closed his eyes and curled his hands into fists at his sides so he wouldn’t reach for her. Ellie stepped in closer, unaware of Alec’s discomfort, and lightly traced his jaw. Alec clenched and unclenched his fists but he lost control when Ellie moved in to kiss his cheek. His hands slowly rose to her waist to keep her there, to extend that moment and that warmth she radiated a little bit longer.

“You need to shave,” Ellie chuckled and her breath tickled his skin. 

“Is that all?” Alec cracked open an eye. “I thought I was so miserable and you hated me because I was a shithead.”

“I still think you’re a shithead,” Ellie laughed softly and leaned into him so that her curls brushed his face. “But I don’t hate you nearly as much.” 

“I guess I can live with that,” Alec sighed dramatically. 

“Don’t make me change my mind,” Ellie warned him and tapped his chest. “Don’t let me down.” 

“I won’t,” Alec promised and opened his eyes. He caught her hand in his and held it there over his heart. She gazed back at him and Alec waited for her to test him. It didn’t take long. Ellie pushed him but Alec had already braced himself. He felt stronger, strong enough to support her, and the weight she put on his heart. And for the first time in what felt like years, it didn’t hurt at all.

*

When Tom dragged himself off the couch to inform Alec that his car had arrived, he found Alec and Fred in the kitchen. Alec was perched on the edge of the table and telling Fred a story about Keira, not Princess Keira, but real-life Keira who when she hadn’t been much older than Fred had decorated her Daddy’s office with a permanent marker and made Alec’s boss so angry that he almost tossed Alec into one of the cells. 

“How come you never talk about her?” Tom asked. 

Alec shrugged but he was spared from answering because just then Mum returned with Alec’s coat. Alec thanked her and stood up to take it from her. 

“Can Alec come back Saturday?”

“That’s up to Alec,” Mum answered at the same time that Alec said: “That’s up to your Mum.” They both turned to look at each other and something silent passed between them. Mum blushed and Alec scratched the back of his neck. 

“Should I tell the car to wait?” Tom asked innocently. 

“No. Goodbye Tom,” Alec said and ruffled Tom’s hair as he passed him. Mum told him to watch Fred for a moment and hurried after Alec. Tom obeyed by quickly unbuckling Fred and taking him with him back to the doorway. 

Alec and Mum were still in the entryway. Alec was putting on his coat and she was saying something about the weather. _Boring_. Tom rolled his eyes and brought Fred back into the kitchen to get a snack. 

If he had stayed he would’ve seen Ellie grab Alec by the lapels of his coat and button it up for him as if he were another one of her children. 

“I don’t care about some bloody storm coming,” Alec grumped at her. 

“Well, maybe you should,” Ellie sighed and gave up. He was so stubborn. Eight months later and she still couldn’t figure out if it was what was killing him or keeping him alive. The car outside honked loudly and both of them turned toward the door. 

“You should go,” she told him. Folding her arms over her chest, she added, “Take care of yourself, _please_.” 

“I will,” Alec assured her. “I’ll see you Saturday?”

Ellie nodded and felt him drawing away. 

“Wait,” she said and caught at his coat to stop him. The feel of the coat and the scent that permeated the worn material were as familiar to her as her own. All Ellie wanted to do was wrap herself up in it again and forget everything. There was no going back to the way things were and she couldn’t numb the pain, Ellie understood that now. The only way to escape the storm was by moving forward. Her sister, her nephew, and even her ex-mother-in-law had tried to help in their own ways by pushing and pulling her in different directions. But in the end it was Tom and Fred that guided her out and Alec. 

God, he’d saved her life and he hadn’t even realized it. More than anything she wanted to return that favor but today Alec had told her that it was unlikely that anyone could save him. 

The car honked again and Alec cursed the driver. 

“Sorry,” he said, cringing.

“Go ahead,” Ellie allowed him and let go. Instead of moving away, Alec came closer. He slid a hand behind her head and bent to kiss her forehead. His lips lingered against her skin and his fingers wove into her hair. He pressed her into the wall and Ellie inhaled sharply. 

“You’ll get caught in the storm,” she gasped. 

“I’ve weathered worse,” he whispered against her temple and Ellie shivered. “ _Ellie_ , you need to stop worrying about me.”

“That’s like asking you to be happy,” Ellie shot back. 

“Who says I’m not?” Alec asked. He framed her face between his long fingers and Ellie tilted her head up towards his. 

Outside the driver laid down on his horn and didn’t let up. In the kitchen Fred started wailing and interrupted them again. Alec groaned and Ellie wondered if God hated her or if he was intervening on her behalf. 

“Text me when you get there,” she called after him as he stormed out.

She took Fred from Tom and together the three of them watched the car leave. 

“Is he coming back?” Tom asked hopefully.

“I hope so,” Ellie answered. She wrapped an arm around Tom’s shoulders and held onto both of her sons. And that was the first of many, many more times she prayed for Alec to come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point we're kind of making the shift from squinty Alec/Ellie to more blatant Alec/Ellie at least from Alec's POV. And I know the jump happened in like 6 hours and it is probably OC, but how you look at someone can change in the blink of an eye over the stupidest smallest things. And sometimes, all it takes is a blink and then they're gone.


	9. The Calm Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun writing this one. Enjoy!

Alec Hardy checked his watch again and sat down on the front of Miller’s Toyota. It had been nearly twenty minutes since she disappeared into the bright yellow house with the realtor and she still wasn’t back yet. Alec scowled at the chosen sunny hue of paint that almost managed to mask the signs of decay and damage. The house was in desperate need of repair and he worried that the realtor would prey upon Miller’s vulnerability and talk her into buying it. Thanks to Miller’s big mouth, the realtor was well aware of the fact that this house was in her price range, that she was a single mother with two young children, and that her lease was up in three weeks. Alec hadn’t made it through the front door before he got sick of the realtor’s bullshit and went back to the car. 

“This was a stupid idea,” Alec berated himself and ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t understand how Miller managed to talk him into coming along but that’s exactly what happened. They met nine months ago and he was no closer to understanding that maddening woman’s hold on him now than he was back then. 

“You’re acting like I handcuffed you to the car and dragged you here.”

Speak of the devil, Alec turned to find Ellie unlocking the car. He jumped up from the bonnet and watched the realtor make her way back to her own car in the driveway. Ellie had opened the GPS in her mobile and completely missed the flirty smile and wave the realtor gave Alec. Or so Alec thought…

“Is that the real reason why you came along or is that why you’re out here hiding?” Ellie asked him, following his gaze. He was tempted to go up there and snog the realtor just to see if he could get a rise out of Ellie. Instead, Alec scowled and opened the car door. 

“Get in the car, Miller.”

Ellie slid into the driver’s seat and handed Alec her mobile. He plugged it into the charger and set it on the console between them. The next destination was only fifteen minutes away, but it felt like an eternity to Alec who had already suffered through two tours and had a clear view of Ellie’s mobile. 

“Who the hell is Brian S.?” he demanded when the GPS froze again. He dug out his glasses and picked up the phone. “He’s sent you twelve text messages in the past four minutes.” 

“You know him, Alec,” Ellie sighed and reluctantly added, “He worked for you.” 

“SOCO Brian?!” Alec exclaimed and ripped the spectacles from his face. Ellie turned bright red or maybe Alec was seeing red. “You’re talking to Dirty Brian too? What about that imbecile your sister set you up with? Was he not good enough for you either?”

Ellie slammed on her breaks at the next stop sign and tore the phone right out of his hand. 

“Brian’s cousin is a realtor!” she informed him. “She got me in touch with my current landlord and they’re helping me buy a house, unlike someone else who’s been sulking the entire time.” 

She skimmed over the text messages, and then texted Brian something back before throwing it back in the console. 

“ _Recalculating_.”

“Damn it!” Ellie hissed, reaching for it again but Alec got to it first. 

“Take a left,” he ordered. 

They pulled up to the next house and Alec immediately hated it. Ellie must’ve seen the look on his face, or maybe she was still angry, because she grabbed a fistful of his coat before he could exit the car. She pulled him toward her so suddenly that their faces nearly collided. 

“This isn’t easy for me and I don’t need you making it any harder. If you’re planning on being a prick then stay here, but if you can pretend to be a normal human being, and you can handle keeping your thoughts to yourself for ten minutes then I’d appreciate it if you came in with me. Can we try this again?”

Alec hadn’t been this close to her since that Sunday morning two weeks ago when he almost kissed her in the hallway. Ellie must’ve realized it too because she let go of him immediately and left him in the car. She was on the front porch and had already introduced herself to the realtor (one of Brian’s cousin’s co-workers) by the time Alec caught up with her. 

“And you must be _Mr_. Richardson,” the realtor greeted him, smiling and holding out a manicured hand. Alec shot Ellie a startled look, but she was sizing up the house or doing an excellent job pretending. He shook the realtor’s hand, wary he might upset Ellie if he contradicted the older woman. 

“Now, if you and your wife, Mrs. Richardson – Mrs. Richardson?” The realtor politely stopped when she realized that Ellie wasn’t behind her. “ _Mrs. Richardson_?” Unaccustomed to her fake name, Ellie ignored her. 

Joining his _wife_ on the steps, Alec cleared his throat and clumsily tried to put an arm around her. Ellie turned as soon as he cleared his throat, and Alec put his hand down on the railing behind her and motioned toward the bemused realtor. 

“Sorry,” Ellie apologized and went to the realtor. “You were saying…?”

Alec followed them inside and tried to convince himself that the only reason he’d almost made a move on Ellie was because Ellie had told the realtor for some odd reason that they were married. Consumed by his thoughts, he didn’t comment on the pest problem or the evidence of recent and frequent flooding. Instead he puzzled over Ellie’s reasons for giving the realtor a fake name and a fake husband. The second the realtor left them alone in the backyard, Ellie turned to him. 

“What do you think?”

“Oh, so now I’m allowed to speak?” Alec retorted. 

Ellie rolled her eyes and inspected the fence that did little to keep the water or the rodents out. 

“I think Richardson is a silly name. Why didn’t you go for something more unusual like Smith?” he asked sarcastically. 

“Alec,” Ellie said warningly. 

“I get it, Miller. It’s clever. Married couples usually have a better chance of closing on a house. But next time you decide to come up with some scheme maybe you could clue me in first so that I don’t look like a moron who forgot that he’s married to you.” He rested his elbows on top of the fence and looked out over the marshes beyond them; obviously the cause of the flooding problem. It took him a minute to realize that Miller was laughing at him.

“What?” he demanded. She leaned back against the fence beside him and caught her breath.

“Alec, the realtor made a mistake assuming that you were my husband, I’ll give her that. But Ellie Richardson is my name,” she said, smiling. 

“Bollocks, your name’s Ellie Miller.”

“Not anymore,” Ellie said softly. She held up her bare hand for him to see. The wedding ring was glaringly absent, probably locked away in that drawer in her bedroom along with that photograph and the pills. “You delivered me the papers yourself months ago because I misspelt my maiden name, Richardson. Now that I’m officially divorced, that’s my name again.”

Alec stared at her as if she was a completely different woman. It was amazing how much of a difference a name could make. He had adamantly refused the intimacy of a first name until it came time to break her, and in the months that followed they both had difficulty disassociating the use of her first name with that moment. Even now, Alec occasionally got the odd reaction from her when he addressed her by her first name, and tended to reserve it for when he was serious and used Miller for everything else. What the bloody hell was he supposed to call her now?

“You’re not Ellie Miller,” Alec sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Christ, Mill – _Ellie_ , you could have said something. I’ve been calling you Miller the whole time.”

“I don’t mind it,” Ellie said and rested a hand on his arm. “Honestly, I’ve gotten so used to it. It’s like me calling you Alec. You hate your first name but I never call you Hardy or sir, well, sometimes I do when I’m mad at you or I’m teasing you.”

“That’s different,” Alec argued. “I’m not your boss anymore.”

“No, you’re not,” Ellie agreed. “But sometimes I think that you forget that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean Mill – Richardson?” he asked and stepped closer. Ellie twisted away from him and surveyed the back of the house. 

Alec observed her profile, noting her professional attire and the extra effort she’d put into her appearance today. As the sun broke free and she shielded her eyes, he could almost imagine that she was the Ellie Miller he’d met on the beach, and that this was how it would have been if Danny’s case had ended with a different killer. But she was thinner, and paler, and her hair was longer. Her curls were already freeing themselves from the hairpins, and Alec had an irrational and very unprofessional urge to either tuck the loose curls behind her ears or yank out the rest of the hairpins. He restrained himself, mulling over her new name. 

“Richardson,” Alec tested the name on his tongue, stretching out the syllables and rolling the Rs. “ _Richardson_.” 

“Shit, the realtor’s coming back,” Ellie announced, smacking him. “Help me out here.” 

Alec looked around him and shook his head. 

“No,” he told her. 

“No?” Ellie blinked at him.

“ _No_ ,” he repeated himself. 

“I don’t know why I brought you,” Ellie groaned, and tugged on his arm to bring him back inside with her where the realtor was waiting. 

“You brought me because I’m your husband,” Alec deadpanned. “Although I don’t know why on earth I married you, can’t even remember the wedding.” Ellie pinched his arm and Alec bit back a yelp. He shook himself free of her under the pretense of chivalrously opening the door for her. Seizing his hand, Ellie effectively crushed any hopes he had of escaping back to the car without her. Fine, his ten minutes were up anyway. 

“Alright, I think my wife and I have seen enough of this place, haven’t we love?” Alec asked ever so sweetly, squeezing Ellie’s hand. Ellie widened her eyes but Alec was already turning to address the realtor. “If you want someone to actually buy this house than you should advise the current owner to cover up that water stain over there and set out some traps to get rid of the mice. Thank you so much for your time.” Alec shook the poor realtor’s hand and ushered his _wife_ outside.

“What happened to acting like a normal human being?” Ellie hissed. 

“It’s been twenty minutes. You said I only had to pretend to be human for ten, Richardson.” Alec held up his watch for her to see. “Twenty minutes ago you were Ellie Miller and I was divorced. Now, suddenly you’re Ellie Richardson and I’m married again to a woman I barely know.”

“You’re such a prick,” Ellie cursed him and rummaged through her purse. “Take the keys. I’ll go apologize for my _husband’s_ bad behavior.”

Alec caught the keys and unlocked the car while Ellie spoke with the realtor. Shoving the keys into the ignition, he started the car and waited. Ellie wasn’t long. 

“Gina suggested another house but it’s thirty minutes out of our way,” Ellie said and gave her phone to him. Alec was about to plug it in when it started ringing. Ellie snatched it from him but Alec caught a glimpse of the caller ID. 

“Let me guess, that moron you’re dating is a realtor as well,” he snarled.

“Geoffrey’s an accountant and we’re not dating,” Ellie corrected him and silenced the call. “I wish you’d stop insulting him, once you get to know him he’s not so bad.”

Alec gaped at her as she backed out of the driveway. 

“You told me that he was as dumb as a post and that you’d rather go twenty years not talking to your sister than see him again,” he quoted her. 

Ellie flushed and nervously tapped the steering wheel. 

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“I met him and I immediately disliked him,” Alec told her.

“You dislike everyone!” Ellie pointed out. “Well, nearly everyone. But I agree with you, I didn’t get the best first impression of Geoffrey. He was a bit too chatty and - and I don’t know. I hardly paid attention to anything he said that night because I was so worried you were going to burn the house to the ground with my kids in it.”

“I would’ve gotten them out,” Alec grumbled. 

“I know that Alec, but that’s not the point. Geoffrey was nervous and confused because of you.” She glanced at him and then quickly looked away. “I mean not just you, but you _and_ me.”

“I still don’t understand,” Alec said, frowning. Ellie tightened her grip on the steering wheel and kept her eyes on the road. 

“He assumed we were _together_ ,” she explained. 

“Oh.” Alec didn’t know what else to say. Tom had jumped to the same conclusion the night of Ellie’s first date with Geoffrey, but Alec had been quick to squash that theory. Yet it was Alec who had gone to bed with Ellie that night and held her through the night, and it was Ellie that had held his hands in hers the following morning when he told her the truth about Keira and Sandbrook. By the time his car arrived that Sunday morning two weeks ago, Alec knew that he’d never be able to look at Ellie the same way.

“He took me to lunch last Sunday and I explained everything,” Ellie continued. “He was working for a branch of his office in Berlin for most of the summer and fall so he didn’t hear about… you know…” 

Alec nodded in understanding. It must have been nice for Ellie to talk to someone who didn’t know anything about the Broadchurch case, and who wouldn’t judge her or compare her to the woman she used to be. He couldn’t blame her for pursuing the man. 

“Are you seeing him again?” Alec asked, studying his hands. 

“I don’t know,” Ellie sighed. “All I know right now is that I have three weeks to find a house and that I’m starving.” She ran a hand through her hair and one of the hairpins fell out. “Shit.” Blindly, she felt around for it while Alec searched the console. He spotted the hairpin in her lap and reached for it without thinking. Ellie jumped out of her skin and nearly sent them into oncoming traffic. 

“Found it.” He offered the hairpin to her but Ellie had a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel and her eyes glued to the road. 

“Hold onto it,” she said. At the first stoplight she tossed her mobile at him and ordered him to find the closest place to eat. “Make sure they serve alcohol,” she added.

Alec took out his spectacles again and pulled up directions to a pub ten minutes away. Ellie got them there in seven. It was a lot nicer than either of them had been expecting, judging from the neighborhood they just drove through. 

“I hope you’re buying,” Ellie informed him, parking the car. 

“I watched your kids for free the last two Saturday nights,” Alec protested as they stepped out of the car. “And I’m helping you look for a house.”

“You volunteered to come with me today and I told you not to come last Saturday because I was sick,” Ellie reminded him, poking him in the chest. Unable to argue her point and not wanting to admit that he had been concerned, Alec shoved his hands into his pockets and found the hairpin again. 

“Fine,” he reluctantly consented. “I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll toast to the Richardsons, fair enough?” 

“I didn’t tell her we were married, you did,” Ellie shot back and raised a hand to her hair. Alec caught her wrist before she could finish the habitual action and send the rest of the hairpins flying. She glowered at him.

“I’m not getting on my hands and knees and searching for the rest of those damn things,” he told her and she understood.

“I’m overdue for a haircut,” she lamented and automatically went to brush the loose curls from her eyes again. Alec was already there, sweeping the tendrils up and away from her face. 

“I like your hair longer,” he complimented her, surprising them both. “But obviously you don’t.” He retrieved the hairpin from his pocket and pushed it back into her hair. Ellie flinched violently, but Alec was remarkably quick with his fingers and had the curls fastened in place before she stepped back from him. Ellie patted her hair down and gave him a funny look. 

“I had a daughter,” Alec defended himself and Ellie’s face softened. 

“Alec, you still have one.” Taking him by the hand, she led him into the pub. 

Inside it was dimly lit but today there was enough natural lighting to make the place feel almost welcoming. A few people looked up from the bar as they walked in but at this off hour there weren’t many patrons. Ellie let go of his hand to use the facilities and Alec went to the bar to get a menu.

“I hope you didn’t order for me,” Ellie said upon returning. Smiling at the barkeeper, she placed an order for both of them without consulting him, and then dragged him over to a table by the window. Alec removed his coat and draped it over the empty chair beside him, but Ellie shucked hers off and dislodged another hairpin. 

“How am I supposed to take control of my life when I can’t even control my hair?” she laughed as Alec fished the hairpin out of her empty glass. 

“You’re doing fine. With any luck you’ll be a new homeowner by the end of the day,” Alec reassured her and gave it back to her. “What time are we supposed to meet the realtor?” 

“Not for another hour, she has two other appointments today so I told her I’d text her if we – _Ow_!” Not paying attention, she had stabbed herself with the hairpin. Expelling a breath of frustration, she held it out to him. “I can’t see what I’m doing could you -?”

Alec plucked it from her fingers and swept the glasses aside. Leaning across the table, he gently cupped Ellie’s face in his hand and smoothed the offending piece of hair down with his fingertips. He used his other hand to carefully slide the hairpin into place and this time Ellie barely blinked. 

“You’re surprisingly good at this,” she remarked. “I sprained my wrist after Joe and I got engaged and he could barely handle washing my hair let alone combing it.”

Alec snorted and stroked her cheek with his thumb. 

“I wasn’t any good at this either,” he confessed, delicately fixing another one of her curls. “But then we had a girl and all she ever wanted to be was a princess.”

“You must’ve spoiled her,” Ellie said and smiled. 

“Not nearly enough,” Alec responded regretfully. 

The barkeeper arrived with their drinks. Alec dropped his hands and sat back in his chair. Ellie thanked her and then mockingly raised her wineglass to Alec.

“A toast to the Richardsons,” she teased him. 

Alec picked up his own glass and touched it to hers. With mock solemnity he toasted her. “To Ellie Richardson, the most stubborn, maddening, and strongest woman I’ve ever met. I don’t know why you married me or how but the twenty minutes I was married to you were some of the most –“

“Stop it!” Ellie laughed. 

“Will you shut up and let me finish?” Alec asked, struggling to keep a straight face. 

“People are staring!” she whispered. 

Ellie was right of course, but for once the curious onlookers were smiling. Not a single person in that pub recognized Alec or Ellie or the stormy pasts that they carried within them. The only thing that they saw was an ordinary married couple and a husband that was making a potentially embarrassing but sweet toast to his wife. And even though it was silly, Alec wished that it was real. 

“I know I haven’t been the best husband,” he started again and set down his wine glass. 

“You’re a terrible husband!” Ellie laughed so hard that she spilt her wine on the table cloth. 

“I’m going to make it up to you,” Alec vowed. He took the glass out of her slackened fingers and safely placed it next to his. “I promise.”

“Well, you can start by paying the bill,“ Ellie played along, still chortling. “And then I guess we could work on you acting like a human being, and I suppose if you’re really ambitious -“

“I could take you to a nicer restaurant on your birthday?” Alec finished for her. Ellie stopped laughing. The line between what was fiction and fact blurred, but Alec reached for her hand anyway. He tugged her toward him and met her in the middle. Kissing her cheek, he whispered, “Happy Birthday, Ellie.”

“How did you know?” Ellie asked under her breath, her wide eyes searching his.

“Tom told me last Saturday when I came by,” he explained, suddenly nervous. “Sorry, I didn’t know what to get you. Flowers seemed like a bad idea after –“

“Oh, Alec,” Ellie interrupted him, sighing. “You haven’t changed at all.” Hurt, Alec started to draw back but Ellie stayed him with a hand on his cheek. 

“Alec, I don’t want flowers, or chocolates, or whatever else you think you’re supposed to give me. The only thing I want, the only thing I’ve wanted for months now…” she trailed off and looked down at their joined hands. Alec laced their fingers together and felt for the first time what was missing. 

“I should’ve gotten you a ring,” Alec said out loud. Ellie’s head jerked up so fast that Alec thought she was going to break her neck. She looked at him as if he was mad, but then she glanced down at their bare ring fingers and caught up with him. 

“You’re a lousy husband!” she accused him, slapping his cheek playfully. “Why the hell did I marry you?”

“No idea,” Alec said, rubbing the spot as if it had really hurt. “But if it’s any consolation, I probably would’ve lost the ring anyway.”

“You’re worse than the first bastard I married. I want a divorce,” Ellie announced and sat back with her arms crossed. 

“Thank god,” Alec sighed in relief. “Richardson’s too bloody hard to spell.”

Ellie glared at him and they simultaneously burst out laughing. They were still wiping the tears from their eyes and gasping for breath when the barkeeper returned with their food. 

*

Across the room, the barkeeper rolled her eyes at the giggling couple and shook her head. _Honeymooners_. She collected the change that one of her regulars had left her and picked up the newspaper he’d been using as a makeshift coaster. The paper was wet and covered in damp rings, causing it to tear and fall apart when she lifted it from the bar. Grumbling, she bent down to clean up the pieces. The large colored photograph of the beach reminded her that she was in dire need of a holiday. She didn’t even notice the bold headline or the smaller photograph at the bottom of the article until she was about to toss it.

A peal of laughter drew her attention to the happy couple by the window. The woman was laughing again at something the man was telling her. He was smiling and gesturing with his hands, obviously in the midst of a funny anecdote. The barkeeper squinted again at the photograph of the scowling D.I. Hardy that in no way resembled the animated man across the room and threw it away. She’d have to talk to her boss about taking a holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alec and Ellie may have seemed out of character but after all the angst in the last few chapters I wanted to write some comic relief. Hope you liked it!


	10. Shelter from the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you that left kudos and comments! You guys are awesome! And just a friendly reminder I'm ignoring the book/Season 2 and have OCs in place of Dave, Tess and Daisy.

The sun was beginning its slow descent by the time they paid the bill and collected their things. Alec held the door for Ellie and they left the pub. Despite the chill in the air, Alec felt warmer than when he had entered the pub and blamed it on the one glass of wine they’d imbibed. Ellie was so busy texting on her mobile that she nearly walked into another parked car. Rolling his eyes, he stepped up behind her and with his hands on her shoulders, guided her through the parking lot. Ellie didn’t even notice.

“Are you texting the realtor?” Alec asked curiously. He’d almost forgotten about the appointment. Ellie stopped suddenly and Alec walked right into her. Instead of backing up, he peered over her shoulder at what had captured her attention. Ellie wasn’t texting the realtor, she was texting Lucy. 

“Your sister thinks you’re with Geoffrey right now,” he concluded. 

Ellie startled and almost dropped the phone on the pavement. Clearly, she hadn’t been aware of his close proximity or the fact that he still had his spectacles on from paying the bill and had been reading over her shoulder. 

“I was wondering why you two suddenly made up and she volunteered to take Fred and Tom for the weekend,” Alec mused as she slowly faced him. 

“She wanted to come with me but she’s useless with these kinds of things,” Ellie defended herself and frowned at her phone. Lucy had already texted her back. 

“She wants you to stay in Broadchurch, doesn’t she?” Alec surmised. Ellie stilled and closed her hand over the phone. “Is that why she chose to set you up with Geoffrey? Is it because after so much time traveling, he’s looking to settle down some place quieter? Is that why you lied and told her that you were with him?”

“I didn’t lie,” Ellie protested vehemently. “She misunderstood me but it’s none of her business and it’s none of yours either.” She shoved past him and Alec leaned back against her car. He watched her storm off and couldn’t suppress a smile. 

“Miller!” he hollered, when she was halfway across the parking lot. 

“Richardson! It’s _Richardson_!” Ellie yelled back, and narrowly missed running into the same car she had earlier. Alec sniggered. 

“You think that this is funny?!” she demanded, retracing her steps. 

“’Course not,” he lied, fighting the urge to laugh. “But I think you’re forgetting something.” He cleared his throat and motioned to her car.

Ellie pressed a hand to her forehead and said an extremely bad word. Alec laughed and Ellie closed the distance between them faster than he thought was possible. He straightened up but she pushed him back into the car. 

“I have half a mind to drive off without you,” Ellie hissed.

“Go ahead,” Alec challenged her. “I already know where we are.”

“Liar,” Ellie accused him and pressed so close to him that it actually hurt. Or maybe it was just the truth that was painful. 

“Sandbrook’s not too far from here.”

Ellie stumbled back from him as if he’d physically pushed her off of him. Sometimes he wished he could just keep his mouth shut, but when he was around her it was worse. Or maybe he just felt worse because he could always see the pain he inflicted on her. Alec took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. 

“Where’s the next house, Miller?”

Ellie didn’t bother correcting him this time. She fumbled for her phone, found the address, and read it to him. 

“But we don’t have to go. We’ve already missed the appointment,” she backtracked. 

“What did you just say?” Alec asked, looking up. 

“We missed the realtor,” Ellie repeated herself slowly, but he wasn’t listening. 

Pushing himself off the car, he took the phone out of her hand and put his specs back on. The realtor had texted Ellie a picture of the house and the address was spelled out beneath it. He hadn’t seen the house in years but it still looked the same. 

“Sandbrook’s not the only thing that’s nearby,” Ellie observed, jarring him out of his reverie. But she wasn’t paying any attention to the picture, she was focused on him. “Where’s your daughter now?” 

“Close,” he grudgingly admitted. “But we’re not going to see her today.”

“Alec –“

“Come on, if we leave now we can make it before dark,” he said and moved around to the other side of the car. 

They got in and drove off. Alec held her phone in his hand and navigated partly through the GPS and partly from memory. He shaved off a good ten minutes of their drive and they arrived just as the sun was setting. Alec unbuckled and leapt out of the car before Ellie had shut it off. 

In the picture the house had looked the same, but standing in the driveway less than ten feet away it seemed smaller somehow and older. Or perhaps it was him that had shrunk and aged over the last decade. The breeze picked up, rustling through the branches of the budding tree in the yard, and Alec closed his eyes. He’d taken Keira here several times over the years but the last time he’d been here, he’d come alone. 

Not this time though. A hand touched his back and Alec opened his eyes into hers. 

“Are you alright?” Ellie asked him softly. Alec nodded. 

Tentatively, he put his around her shoulders, more to reassure himself than her. After a moment, Ellie wound her arm around his waist and together they stood on the sidewalk and gazed up at the house in silence.

“When Keira was a couple years older than Fred, Vicky – my ex – and I started fighting,” he said at last. Ellie began to pull away but Alec kept his arm around her and his eyes on the house. “Sometimes the fights got so bad that Vicky would take off for hours or a couple of days, and sometimes she took Keira with her.”

Ellie placed a hand on his chest and Alec took a deep breath. 

“I never knew where she went when she took off by herself, but I was terrified that one of those times she’d take Keira and they wouldn’t come back. So, one day after Vicky took off alone, I put Keira in the car and we drove around until somehow we wound up here.”

He cleared his throat and pointed down the street. 

“There’s a park down that way, right next to a school. Keira was five and for her that was paradise,” he said, smiling at the memory. “So I told her that if Vicky ever left we could live here. Keira soon outgrew the park but whenever things got bad this was still our place.” He gestured to the house in front of them.

Squeezing Ellie’s shoulder, Alec left her and the safety of the sidewalk to adjust the lopsided FOR SALE sign. He kept going until he reached the stairs and then he sat down. Ellie followed him, poking around for a minute to establish that the house really was empty, before joining him on the steps. He clasped his hands loosely between his knees and Ellie scooted closer until their shoulders brushed. 

“Vicky went back to work when Keira was eight and both of our careers took off. The fighting stopped after that and I stopped worrying about losing Keira. God, I was so stupid,” he regretted bitterly. “Never in a million years did I think that _I_ would be the one to leave _her_.”

Ellie leaned against him and they watched the sun sink lower in the sky. The sun had almost disappeared behind the house across the street when Ellie hesitantly touched his knee. 

“Where’s your daughter now?” she asked again. “She’s not in Sandbrook anymore, is she?”

Alec shook his head and glanced down at his hands. He scratched the spot on his left hand where his own wedding ring had once been. It still amazed him that there wasn’t a single mark or blemish to indicate the fourteen years he’d worn it faithfully. 

“Within a week of the Sandbrook scandal, Vicky had filed for divorce and asked for a transfer. After the press showed up at Keira’s school, Vicky pulled her out of there and moved them both in with her boyfriend a safe distance away. As far as I know they’re still there.”

Alec took out Ellie’s phone from where he had thoughtlessly tucked it into his coat. Opening the GPS app in her phone, he shifted so that they could both see the screen. His directions from earlier were still in there and Alec moved past their current location, expanding the map as he went along. Using his finger, he traced the main road that would take him toward Keira. 

“If you keep going west, away from Sandbrook…” 

He had memorized the route and his finger followed the color coded labeled roads on her screen even as he traveled them in his mind. He’d been there so many times but he’d only managed to actually see Keira a handful of times. When she was feeling guilty, Vicky would email or text him pictures of Keira, and sometimes (usually when she needed money) she’d call just to tell him how Keira was doing. But Alec didn’t want to hear it from Vicky. He longed to see Keira and he would give anything just to hear her voice. 

His finger stopped and hovered over the destination so long that the GPS automatically marked the address and started calculating the easiest route. 

“It’s not far from here,” Ellie observed, startling him. He’d forgotten she was there and how close she was. “We can go right now,” she offered as he turned to look at her. 

The last rays of sunlight were in her face and Alec had an impulsive urge to capture it between his hands. She was willing to drive him all that way just to see his daughter, and Alec wanted to take her up on her offer so badly that it hurt. 

Instead he shook his head and wordlessly handed the phone back to her. Ellie folded her hand over his.

“Why not?” she pressed him. 

“Vicky could have me arrested,” Alec said, omitting the fact that the restraining order and Vicky’s fear of him exposing her and taking Keira had long since expired over the course of two and half years. Ellie looked unconvinced too, so Alec told her the truth: “Or worse, Keira could tell me that she hates me and that she never wants to see me again.” 

“Alec, she’s a fifteen year old girl,” Ellie reminded him gently. “When I was fifteen, I’m sure I told my parents that I hated them too.” 

“She’s sixteen now,” Alec corrected her. Ellie exhaled heavily and took the phone from him. She tapped on the mobile for a minute, probably texting her sister again, or perhaps Geoffrey, or maybe even Dirty Brian. She slid the phone into her pocket before Alec could find out.

“You have to talk to her, Alec,” she said.

“Not today.” Alec stood up and crossed the lawn. Ellie hopped up and chased after him. 

“You can’t keep putting it off!” 

“I’m not!” Alec insisted as Ellie caught up to him.

“That’s bullshit!” Ellie spat.

Alec whirled to face her.

“You’re scared,” she accused him. “That’s the only reason why you’re avoiding her.”

“Of course I’m scared,” he replied, balling his hands into fists. “I gave up everything to keep her safe and I ended up losing her. Do you know what I would give just to see her one last time?” He threw his arms wide. “But I’ve got _nothing_ left to give!”

“That’s not true,” Ellie tried, but Alec lunged forward and grasped her by the shoulders. 

“She hates me. I don’t think you understand that!” He hissed. The force of his anger propelled him forward until Ellie was backed into the side of the house. “I ruined her life when Vicky and Sandbrook ruined mine. My heart was working fine until that fucking mess, and now I’m not even sure I can handle seeing my own daughter because if she told me she hated me again, after all this time, and everything I’ve been through, and she’s been through, I don’t think – I don’t think my heart could bear it…”

He released Ellie and made it a few steps before he needed the side of the house to support himself. He collapsed against the cream colored siding, his right hand already digging into his coat. He listened for the crack of the plastic and swallowed two of the white pills. Then he let himself slide down until he was sitting on the cold ground. 

When he opened his eyes again, Ellie was hovering over him with her hands on his face. In the dying light, he could see her white face and the lines that he often forgot were there until he upset her. Some of the lines were tear tracks. 

“Stop it,” he said and lifted his arms to take her hands in his. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” she whispered. Alec let go of her hands to wipe the tears from her eyes and Ellie sniffled. Reaching for his face again, she wiped his own face with her sleeve. Alec hadn’t even realized that his eyes were wet too. 

“I won’t bring Keira up again,” she promised. 

“Yes, you will,” Alec argued, smirking slightly at the obstinate woman before him. A watery smile flitted across Ellie’s face and Alec mapped it out with his eyes. 

“I don’t believe half of what you said to me, you know,” Ellie said, sobering. She rested her hand on his knee. “You haven’t lost her yet, Alec, but you will if you don’t talk to her. I think you and I both know that it’s going to do more damage the longer you wait to tell her the truth.”

Alec opened his mouth to argue with her but Ellie held up her hand. 

“I also don’t think that you’ve given _everything_ away. You have so much more to give, in here,” she said and laid her hand on his heart. “I only wish that you could understand that, and then maybe you’d think that the risk is worth it…”

Alec swallowed hard.

“Sometimes, taking the risk means losing so much more,” he said haltingly. The sun was gone and had taken with it the last of the waning light, but Alec thought that he saw a spark in Ellie’s eyes. 

“I thought you had nothing left to give,” she echoed his words from earlier, clutching at the front of his coat. 

“So, did I,” Alec replied. “But then I met this annoying Detective Sergeant and she pushed me beyond what I thought were my limits and drove me halfway to insanity.”

“That must’ve been around the time that this broody Scottish shithead showed up out of the blue and took fucking my job,” Ellie shot back. 

Alec laughed and Ellie grinned. The breeze picked up around them and carried away his laughter and Ellie’s grin. Raising a hand, he brushed back the curls that had blown into her eyes. Ellie shivered as his fingers strayed to her temple and Alec felt the air immediately change between them. 

“We should go before someone calls the police about trespassers,” Alec suggested weakly and withdrew his hand.

“Alec, we are the police,” Ellie corrected him. 

“Not anymore,” Alec grumbled. 

“They don’t have to know that,” Ellie pointed out, smiling mischievously. 

Holding out her hands to him, they helped each other up. Alec immediately felt lightheaded, but for the first time he honestly couldn’t tell if it was a side effect of his heart condition or the woman in front of him. Ellie steadied him with a hand on his back and Alec slung his arm over her shoulders. As they walked back to the car, an elderly man came out of the house across the street. Ellie smiled and waved to him, and Alec drew her into his side. 

“You still got your badge on you?” he asked under his breath. 

“Fortunately, I do,” she whispered back as the man eyed them suspiciously. 

“Do you still have handcuffs?” Alec wondered aloud, recalling her threat from earlier. 

“Do you really want to find out?” Ellie meant it as a warning, but as their eyes met they both realized the other implications and separated from each other. He swore her face was flushed when they got into the car. Alec knew his was. 

*

“ _Alec_.”

Alec jolted awake and hit his head on the window. Cradling his head, he looked outside only to see the familiar town center from his nightmares. It was dark by now, and Alec realized that he must’ve dozed off at some point during the long drive back. He covered his eyes to block out the scenery and clenched his hand over his thigh. 

“Alec,” Ellie said again and leaned over the console to rub his arm. “Are you alright?”

“’course I am,” he mumbled groggily and batted her hand away. “Drive,” he urged her.

Ellie sighed and the car started to move again. A short while later the car stopped. Alec heard the sound of the key turning in the ignition and then there was silence. He peeked through his fingers, confirming the sight of Ellie’s cottage before he lowered his hand from his eyes and unclenched his fist. Neither one of them made a move to unbuckle or get out.

“Do you hate my driving or do you just really hate this place?” Ellie asked, studying him from the driver’s seat. Her face was lit by the outside light she’d left on because of course there were no streetlights all the way out here. 

“It’s not your driving,” Alec assured her, though she had almost sent them into oncoming traffic earlier. But that had been mostly his fault. “Just passing through this town sets me on edge. I honestly don’t know how you stand it.”

“This is my home,” Ellie replied and looked up at the house. 

“Not for much longer,” Alec reminded her and unbuckled his seatbelt.

The keys jangled as she removed them from the ignition but instead of unbuckling, she bent over the steering wheel. Alec touched her shoulder. She turned toward him but didn’t quite meet his eye. His hand fell away from her shoulder and he stared at her in disbelief. 

“You’ve changed your mind,” he said incredulously. 

“Alec,” she began, but Alec spoke over her. “I don’t believe this! Miller, you dragged me to four different houses and made me suffer through three tours. We wasted an entire day!”

“I only forced you to see three of them,” Ellie argued. “And you spent most of the first two tours sulking next to the car because that realtor was flirting with you.” 

“I wasn’t flirting with her!” he spluttered. 

“Of course not, that would’ve required an actual conversation. But you should’ve said _something_ to her at the first house so that I didn’t have to listen to her giggle and ask you if you wanted to test out the bedroom or check out the garden with her.”

“The first house didn’t even have a garden,” Alec recalled, frowning. 

“I _know_ , Alec! God, you’re so oblivious!” Ellie groaned and lowered her forehead to the steering wheel. 

“If it bothered you that much why didn’t you just tell her that we were married like you did with the other realtor, instead of prattling on about how you were a single mother and letting her take advantage of your situation,” Alec suggested. 

Ellie straightened up and rolled her eyes.

“For the last time, I never told anyone that we were married. You did,” she reminded him, stabbing a finger in his direction. “And how was I supposed to know that you weren’t going to go into cardiac arrest when someone mistook us for a married couple.” 

Alec opened his mouth and snapped it shut. If he hadn’t been so intent on not upsetting Ellie, it probably would’ve freaked him out. Drumming his fingers on the console, he froze as a more frightening possibility loomed over him.

“Are you moving in with your boorish boyfriend?” 

“His name is Geoffrey and he’s not my boyfriend!” Ellie snapped.

“Two weeks ago, you tried to suck his face off right in front of me, and judging by the text messages I saw earlier your sister is convinced that you went house hunting with him today and that you’re having sex with him tonight; so forgive me if I’m having difficulty believing that he’s _not_ your boyfriend,” he spat. Ellie gaped at him. 

Getting out of the car, he slammed the door shut. A moment later, Ellie did the same. Alec sat down on bumper of her car and felt around in his coat for his phone. He heard Ellie curse him and then the door to the house banged shut too.

Alec scowled at the house. The kitchen light went on, her shadow passed by the window, and then she deliberately turned off the outside light on him. Luckily, he had his coat and it was warmer than the last time he’d accidentally locked himself out of her house. Locating his phone, he pulled it out to call for a taxi. The screen promptly turned black and the dead battery flashed at him. 

Alec swore and tossed the useless device onto the boot. Dropping his head into his hands, he counted backwards from one hundred. Instead of helping him, it only made him think of the previous time he’d tried counting and how he’d been able to match his breathing and heartrate to Ellie’s. He got all the way to forty-two again before he gave up.

Retrieving his phone, he marched up to the house and pounded on the door. Seconds later, Ellie flung it wide open. 

“Give me one good reason why I should let you in!” 

“My phone’s dead.” Alec offered it up for her to see.

Ellie shook her head and went to shut the door in his face, but Alec stuck his foot in between the door and the door jamb and mercifully caught the door before she cracked his head open. 

“You still owe me for watching your kids,” he reminded her, seizing upon the debt even though he really didn’t care. “Let me charge my phone so I can call for a taxi and we’ll be even.”

“We don’t have the same phone,” Ellie said, her eyes narrowing. 

“I know but I left my phone charger here last Saturday,” he admitted.

Ellie’s eyebrows shot up but Alec had already pushed his way into the house. He went straight for the stairs with Ellie hot on heels.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded and grabbed the back of his coat. Alec stopped and resisted the urge to beat his head against the wall repeatedly because she was definitely going to kill him now.

“The charger’s plugged in behind your bed,” he reluctantly informed her. 

Shocked, Ellie released his coat and he made a dash for the bedroom. Unplugging it, he was almost to the door when Ellie blocked the doorway with her arms wide. 

“You little shit! I knew you didn’t sleep on the sofa last weekend,” she crowed triumphantly. 

“I tried, honestly, I did,” he defended himself, scratching the back of his neck “But the floor’s more comfortable than that thing downstairs masquerading as a piece of furniture. If I ever win the lottery I swear, Miller, the first thing I’ll do is buy you a proper sofa.”

Ellie stared at him as if he’d lost his mind and then she threw back her head and laughed. Alec sat down on the edge of the bed, beyond understanding the confusing woman before him. Ten seconds ago she was trying to kill him and now she was laughing at him. 

Ellie fell back on the bed beside him, gasping for breath. 

“I cannot believe you!” she exclaimed. “You accuse me of being some kind of strumpet just because I snogged a bloke and my sister’s making assumptions about the nature of my relationship with him, and yet –“

“I never called you _that_!” Alec protested loudly. No one even used that word anymore. 

“Alec, you didn’t have to, it was implied,” Ellie dismissed his denials with a lazy wave of her hand. “I’m already over it, but it’s funny that you would take offense at how I acted with Geoffrey when you’re the one that stole into my bed on three separate occasions.”

“I didn’t –“ Alec’s jaw clicked shut because she was absolutely right. “You stole my coat,” he finally defended himself lamely. 

“That was one time and you could’ve easily woken me,” Ellie said and rolled her eyes. She propped herself up on her elbows but Alec leaned over her before she could rise from the bed. 

“I never called you a strumpet and I never meant to imply anything like that,” he clarified, searching her face and willing her to understand. “And I’m sorry I didn’t sleep on another uncomfortable piece of furniture or in the shower or on the floor like a – a gentleman,” he apologized, cringing at his lack of a better word. “I’m not that kind of man, but Ellie you have to understand that I would _never_ –“ 

“I know, Alec,” Ellie cut him off, sparing him the embarrassment. She pushed him back from her and sat up beside him. Sighing, she laid a hand on his thigh. “You’re not perfect, Alec, but you’re a better man than give yourself credit.”

“You barely know me,” Alec blurted out, once again stunned by that frightening amount of trust she had in him. 

“Alec, I slept with a murderous pedophile for fourteen years and never saw it,” Ellie reminded him. “It’s terrifying to admit this, but I probably know you better than I knew my own husband.”

Their eyes locked and even though it killed him, he couldn’t argue with her. 

“Come on,” Ellie urged him and stood up. “I want to show you something.”

Alec rose to follow her and the phone charger clattered to the floor in his wake, forgotten again.


	11. The Ledge and the Storm on the Horizon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone that left Kudos! Once again I IGNORED S2 and waved my creative license as far as the extent of Alec's professional/personal involvement in Joe's trial/sentencing and the aftermath. Obviously I don't work in UK law enforcement or have a law degree, though sometimes I like to pretend that I do.

Alec Hardy had done a lot of dumb things in his life and tonight he was going to tack yet another item to that growing list if Ellie Miller didn’t slow down. Having a heart attack atop one of those bleeding cliffs that looked exactly the same as every other cliff in Broadchurch was quite possibly the worst way he could imagine dying. It was right up there next to death by drowning, but Ellie didn’t know that.

“Over here!” she said finally, motioning for him to follow her off the path (if you could even call it that). They’d reached another overlook and Alec took advantage of the few precious seconds to breathe. Discretely wiping the sweat from his brow, he nodded at whatever the hell she’d dragged him all the way out here to see. 

“Nice. Very nice,” he commented from where he still stood panting.

“You can’t see it from there!” she protested, beckoning to him. 

“Sure, I can,” he lied. “It’s lovely.” It was anything but lovely. Ellie was at the top of what looked like a straight drop into the ocean. It was hard to tell with all the sea grass and weeds growing rampant and wild, and that hideous thorny hedge that was flourishing in the absence of whatever idiot had accidentally introduced it into this environment, because clearly it didn’t belong here. Sort of like him. 

“Come on, Alec,” she wheedled, holding out her hands to him. 

Cursing under his breath, Alec gave the hedge a wide berth and carefully picked his way through the tall grass and overgrown weeds. He’d never liked the way the sand shifted beneath his feet or the way all the land seemed to be gradually heading down in that direction as the ocean swallowed it centimeter by centimeter with each rising tide. But Ellie apparently loved it and she was under the mistaken impression that everyone else should as well. 

“Baby steps,” she teased him as he stubbornly halted a safe distance away from her and the ledge.

“This place is a death trap,” he snapped at her, refusing to budge. “I don’t know how anyone could possibly want to live here,” he said condescendingly. Ellie’s face fell and Alec realized belatedly that he’d insulted her. She was quick to remind him though, that his own parents had brought him there on holiday when he was a boy. 

“My Dad was an idiot,” he informed her. 

“You must take after him then.” 

Alec glared at her. Ellie turned to hide her smirk and sat down on the ledge. After several minutes of debating whether to head back, he gave up and gingerly lowered himself to the ground beside her. Ellie looked at him smugly as he settled in beside her. Alec swallowed and almost managed to keep his eyes on the horizon. 

“Why are your hands shaking?” Ellie worried, taking the closest one in hers. Her hand was soft and warm and Alec gripped it like a lifeline. “Are you afraid of heights?”

Alec shook his head and anxiously gazed downward at the distant waves crashing on the shore over a hundred feet below them. He feared the power of the ocean and death by drowning; but it was the dangerous woman beside him that scared him more than anything else. 

“Sorry,” Ellie apologized, mortified. “I forgot that you don’t like being on the water. We can go back.”

“Not yet,” Alec insisted stubbornly. Ellie sat back and he tried to relax. 

Taking a deep breath, he made a valiant effort to appreciate what Ellie wanted to show him here and failed miserably. The air still tasted like salt, the sky was still full of a frightening amount of stars, and the ocean still thrashed against the beach and roared below the crumbling eroding piece of land that they sat on. He felt smaller, powerless, and helpless here. He had hoped that Broadchurch would bring him peace, but that hadn’t happened. If anything, Broadchurch had only brought him closer to that dangerous ledge that he’d been trying so hard to keep away from. 

Ellie nudged him and he looked at her for the first time. The wind coming in off the ocean had brought some color into her face and turned her hair into a wild mass of curls. Her eyes were bright and her legs were swinging freely in the air below them. Despite everything that had happened, she was still fearlessly at home here on the sandy ledge with a frightening drop into the raging ocean below them. She still loved it here.

“Are you really going to stay here?” he asked her.

Ellie shrugged and looked out at the stars beyond them.

“Broadchurch is a part of me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to leave it behind, not really,” she told him, deep in her memories. “Hopefully I’ll move somewhere else and give the boys the fresh start that they deserve, but no matter where I go Broadchurch will always be here,” she said, laying her hand over her heart. 

“And in _here_ ,” Alec said and lightly tapped her forehead. He had slept beside Ellie and witnessed firsthand what she had tried to take sleeping pills to suppress. The fact that she loved Broadchurch only made it more haunting for her. He couldn’t understand why she would linger, hanging onto the edge of that small despicable town and clinging to the last remnants of a life lost like the stench of smoke from the bonfires he swore he smelt sometimes in the air and on his coat, but he could barely make sense of why he kept coming back to her. 

“What about you?” she asked him after several minutes of silence.

“What about me?” He didn’t understand the question. Ellie looked down at their joined hands. Alec hadn’t even realized he was still holding onto her.

“Would you stay here?” she echoed his earlier query and Alec froze. 

“Are you asking me to stay?”

“What if I did?” Ellie challenged him. He felt like a moron. No wonder why she’d gotten so upset with him in the car earlier. Alec couldn’t answer her, so Ellie explained, “My landlord said he’d extend my lease for another six months if I accept a higher rate. I can barely afford what I’m paying now and since you’re homeless –“

“ _Homeless_ ,” Alec interrupted her. “Is that what you think of me?”

“When’s the last time you stayed in one place for more than a month?” she interrogated him. “And the Traders doesn’t count.”

Alec shut his mouth because he honestly couldn’t remember. 

“That’s what I thought,” Ellie said, satisfied. 

“I moved around a lot for work,” Alec admitted. Ellie was skeptical. Alec fidgeted beneath her suspicious frown and blew out a breath. “I didn’t technically work in the Broadchurch police department anymore, but they extended my contract on paper for Wessex County for another six months after Joe confessed.”

“Why would they do that?” Ellie wondered. 

“They thought Joe was going to appeal.” 

Ellie ripped her hand from his. 

“ _What_?”

“Most of our evidence was circumstantial,” he reminded her. “Joe’s admission of guilt and his detailed confession were the only pieces of evidence that would’ve held up in court. If he were to recant…” Alec ran his hand through his hair and chanced a look at Ellie. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. 

“Why the fuck would they keep _you_ on?”

“I suggested it,” Alec informed her. Ellie’s jaw dropped and she shrunk back from him. “ _Ellie_ ,” Alec pleaded, but Ellie was already getting to her feet. Alec sighed and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Ellie, they were going to put you on the stand.”

He held his breath and let it out slowly. Taking another deep breath, he lowered his hands and gazed down into the abyss below. 

“As long as I stayed on as the Senior Investigating Officer for the case, I could prevent that from happening or at least prepare you for it.” It sounded so pathetic now that he’d said it out loud, but at the time Alec had been desperate to help Ellie in the only way he knew how.

“You lied to me,” Ellie accused him from somewhere behind him. 

“You never asked,” Alec snapped back, still stung by her “homeless” remark. He checked his temper because he owed her an explanation. “Joe never appealed so there was no point in telling you. It would’ve upset you, and after all the hell you’d been through –“

“Is that why you keep coming back here to check up on me?” Ellie demanded. “Is it because they’re paying you to do it?”

“No!” He clambered to his feet, almost forgetting that they were presently on a death defying ledge. Catching himself, he edged away from the drop and stalked through the tall grass after her. “The only time I got sent here was because of the divorce papers that _you_ screwed up, and let me remind you again that Broadchurch is the last place on earth I’d ever revisit if it hadn’t been for you.”

Ellie spun around and Alec stopped short. 

“Besides, my contract expired weeks ago,” he told her.

“Then what are you still doing here?” she wondered. “Why come back at all if you hate this place that much?” 

Wasn’t it obvious? Alec gaped at the woman in front of him. How could she not know? Up until two weeks ago, Alec knew exactly why he had to return to Broadchurch, but one conversation in the kitchen had suddenly complicated everything. Catching his jaw, he scrubbed a hand over his unshaven chin before he answered her.

“I ask myself that question every time I come back to this damn place but you’re here,” he practically spat, gesturing around them at the eerie landscape. “You’re always going to be here, and as long as you’re here –“

“Shut up!” Ellie cut him off. Her face was white and she was shaking her head at him. “This has _nothing_ to do with me. You’ve got some fucked up sense of remorse and a strange way of dealing with it. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with me.” She thrust her hands out in front of her as if she could ward off the truth as easily as she could physically distance herself from him.

“Ellie, _please_ ,” he begged, extending a hand but Ellie slapped the hand away.

“I’m not your penance!” she snarled. “And I’m not a child! You don’t have to protect me from everything just because you feel some kind of twisted moral obligation. I can take care of myself!” 

“I know.” Alec seized her arm before she could walk away from him. Ellie was breathing hard but she didn’t pull away from him. “I know that you can take care of yourself and the boys. It was foolish of me to think that you couldn’t handle it on your own. I was only trying to help, and yes at first it was mainly guilt driven but now -” He halted in his speech, at a complete loss to describe whatever it was that was driving him back to this hellish place over and over again. It had started out as a legitimate concern for her family’s wellbeing, but now it had morphed into something that went far beyond an innocent sense of obligation. Alec wasn’t sure he could have labeled it, even if Ellie hadn’t stopped him, but whatever it was, it was gaining strength and had the potential to develop into a storm almost as destructive as the one that ripped her life apart. 

Swallowing the truth, Alec let go of Ellie’s arm and backed down. It was as if he had doused Ellie with cold water, the heat of her gaze simmered and went out. 

“Alec, you don’t need to keep coming back here,” she sighed. Her anger was gone and now she just looked tired. 

“Is that what you want?” he inquired. Ellie frowned, not comprehending. Alec jammed his hands into his coat pockets and pretended to take in the view. “If that’s what you want, I’ll stop coming round.”

“No,” Ellie said quickly. “But if it’s what you want –“

“No,” he answered. 

Their eyes met. Ellie visibly relaxed and Alec felt a little bit of the tension leave his shoulders. At least they’d agreed on something that didn’t need to change. The wind switched and Alec felt it in his hair. In the distance a tattered flag unfurled and swelled, straining toward the ocean. The grass swayed and danced around them, and Ellie’s hair was a mess in the absence of all but one of the hairpins she started the day with. Nothing ever stayed still, nothing ever stayed the same. Alec found the metallic glint in her hair and touched the hairpin. Without asking, he removed it from her tangled hair. The curls tumbled down around her face and then were instantly blown back by the wind. 

“I saw Joe,” Alec confessed in light of the larger confession he’d never be able to make and offered the pin back to her. “After the trial, they made me go see him once a month.”

“I didn’t ask,” Ellie pointed out.

“No, but you were going to eventually,” Alec predicted correctly, judging by the way she deliberately looked away. He bent the hairpin out of shape while he waited for the question he knew she was dying to ask him. When he tried to bend the thing back, he was too rough and it snapped in half. 

“How was he?” she asked finally. Stretching out a trembling hand, she reached past him and broke off the top of a particularly tall weed with some kind of disgusting flowering thing on top. She twirled it between her fingers.

“He was-” Alec sighed and tossed the broken hairpin into the sand. “He was Joe.”

Ellie crushed the flower in her fist.

“He’s a monster for what he did to Danny but he still loves you and the boys. As long as he continues to love you, he won’t put you through another trial. I made it very clear to him,” Alec told her, deliberately leaving out the fact that he’d actually threatened Joe with bodily harm. He’d called in a lot of favors to stay on for those extra six months, but by the end of it he was certain that Joe Miller wasn’t leaving that prison cell for at least a decade. 

Ellie slowly uncurled her hand and the squashed petals and twisted remains of the weed took to the wind. Alec watched them go and Ellie rubbed her palms together. She held them out in front of her, examining the green stains that had been left behind. 

“What are you going to do now that it’s all over?” she asked him, still studying her smeared hands.

“I don’t know,” Alec replied, shrugging. “What are you going to do?”

Ellie shook her head and started scrubbing at the stains with her fingernails. 

“You could stay here, you know,” she casually offered again.

“I don’t want to,” he said, truthfully. “And I don’t think you want to stay here either.” 

“You try telling my sister that,” Ellie grumbled and scratched at her palm so vigorously that she almost broke the skin. “She’s all I’ve got now, her and Olly, and they’ve been so good to the boys…” Alec couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Stop that,” he scolded her. Taking her by the arms, he waited until she gave in and let her hands fall. His hands slid down to loosely encircle her wrists. He lifted one hand and inspected her palm for blood, because he didn’t trust any of the flora or fauna out here. Running his thumb lightly over the green stains and red irritated flesh, he traced her palm lines. 

“You know that you have me too,” he reminded her without looking up. “If you or the boys ever need anything at all…”

“I know, Alec,” Ellie said. Alec followed the palm line up to her wrist and released her. “It’s always the people that you least expect that wind up being there for you at the end,” Ellie remarked, smiling slightly at him. 

“People are funny like that,” Alec agreed and returned her half smile. “They’re always full of surprises.”

And no one had surprised him more than Ellie Miller. 

“It’s late,” Ellie noted. “The last thing I need is someone thinking that I’m sleeping with you too.” 

“Right, because we’ve never slept together,” Alec snorted.

Ellie rolled her eyes and bumped his shoulder hard as she led up to the path that took would take them to the cottage. 

“You know what I meant,” she said to him as they slowly climbed higher. Alec was concentrating on his breathing as the incline was steep, so he almost missed it when she clarified: “I’m not having sex with you.” 

“Wow, Richardson,” Alec chuckled. “I really do feel like we’re married.” 

Ellie punched him in the arm and Alec considered himself lucky that she hadn’t pushed him off the cliff.

“You’re sleeping on the sofa tonight,” she informed him, wagging her finger at him. 

“Oh, come on, Richardson!” he moaned and nearly walked into the monstrous thorn bush. He actually jumped but the humiliation was well worth it. 

Ellie laughed at him the entire way back.

*

Ironically, Alec did wind up sleeping on the sofa. They came inside and sat down on the sofa despite Alec’s alleged complaints against the poor undeserving piece of furniture. Ellie went into the kitchen to make tea and called Tom to say goodnight. By the time she ended the call and finished the tea, it was abundantly clear that Alec had been lying about the sofa being uncomfortable. He was sound asleep. Ellie knew he’d probably have a stiff neck in the morning but she didn’t want to wake him and he kind of deserved it.

Ellie set out a glass of water for him and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. She didn’t know when it happened but at some point in the last eight months Alec Hardy had carved out a place for himself in her life. He hadn’t replaced Joe, nothing could ever replace Joe, but Alec had crept in like the light came into a room just before the dawn. He woke her up in a way that no one else had been able to and he returned over and over again, burning just a little bit brighter with each passing morning as she got to know him and came to rely on him. 

Tracing his jaw, Ellie slid her fingers down to the column of his throat until they hovered over his pulse point. It was the growing attraction to him that bothered Ellie the most. She hadn’t even thought of Alec as a man until the day of the sentencing two months after Joe confessed. The damage had already been done, but Ellie remembered how he’d put his arm around her and tried to protect her from the barrage of reporters. In that moment, the world had shrunk down to the rough material of his coat and that irregular heartbeat against her cheek as she finally shut down and blocked everything out. It had been pouring, and yet Alec had stubbornly walked with her through the driving rain back to her car, keeping her close to him, although it was unlikely the press would pursue them into the rainstorm. Ellie started the ugly row that followed once they reached the parking garage, but she’d never seen Alec so angry and she hoped she never would again. Toe to toe, soaking wet, and enraged, their voices had echoed off the concrete walls until a security guard approached them to see if Ellie was alright and Alec had backed off. Running a hand through his dripping hair, he’d looked at Ellie and ordered the security guard to make sure she got into her car safely, and then he had left.

Ellie hadn’t been alright then and she wasn’t completely alright now, but even though at times Alec made her so mad that she wanted to strangle him, Ellie didn’t think she could ever let Alec go again like she had in the parking garage. Her boys had become attached to him and he was now a part of their life in a way that he hadn’t been before. And that’s why the attraction scared Ellie. 

She trusted Alec more than anyone else but he was just as broken as she was. Over time Ellie imagined that they could’ve healed together, but as Ellie took his pulse she knew that time was something they couldn’t take for granted. Bending over him, she kissed his forehead. Alec stirred and Ellie almost tripped over the coffee table behind her. Groaning, he stretched out with a grimace and Ellie scrambled back until the table was between them. 

“What time is it?” he asked her hoarsely. Rolling back his sleeve, he squinted at his wrist watch. “Your birthday’s almost over.”

Ellie shrugged. She would’ve preferred to skip it altogether. It was just another milestone, just another day that reminded her of everything she had lost. Last year Joe had actually remembered and he and the boys had sweetly brought her breakfast in bed. She tried not to think of what he had been overcompensating for. Wrapped up in her memories, Ellie didn’t notice Alec get up from the sofa until he was standing over her.

“I made tea,” she recalled and hurried out of the room. Alec followed her into the kitchen and started opening up cupboards and pulling out drawers at random. Ellie hoped he was cleaning again and focused on shutting off the kettle and pouring out the tea. 

“Do you have a lighter?” he asked her. 

“It’s over by the sink on top of the cupboard,” she answered without turning around or recalling Alec’s spotty track record with fire. She heard the click of the lighter and then the lights went out. Ellie froze.

“Alec?” Ellie whispered and slowly turned to set the tea down on the table. 

“Right here,” he answered. The lighter sparked and his face appeared across the room from her lit by the flare. There was a candle cupped in his left hand. He replaced the lighter on top of the cabinet and carefully brought the glass encased candle over to her.

“What are you doing? You’ll burn yourself again,” she scolded him but there was a lump in her throat.

“That was one time,” Alec scoffed but he put the candle on the table in front of her. “Hold on, I’ve got it here somewhere.” Patting himself down, he finally pulled out something small and shiny from inside his coat and set it down next to the candle. Ellie picked it up. It was one of those free after dinner chocolates wrapped in silver foil printed with the name of the pub they’d visited earlier. She looked at him and he nervously tugged at his earlobe. 

“I know it’s not much but it’s still your birthday,” he explained himself as she continued to stand there and stare. He let go of his ear and impatiently motioned to the candle. “Go on, make a wish.”

Ellie gazed into the flame. There were a lot of things she wanted to wish for but she knew that none of those wishes would ever come true. But maybe if she wished for something so very small and simple like the piece of candy in her hand… Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and blew out the candle. 

The kitchen plunged into darkness but neither of them moved to get the lights. Ellie instinctively reached out for Alec and found his sleeve. The image of the flame was still there before her eyes, blinding her, but Alec burned brighter than ever in that darkened room. For the first time she could see him as clear as day.

“Happy Birthday,” he whispered. “I’m sorry it wasn’t –“

Ellie hugged him. Alec was slow to return the embrace. He’d held her before but somehow this time it was different. Perhaps, it was because for once Ellie wasn’t crying. Not yet anyway.

“Thank you,” she said and swallowed down the lump in her throat. Her eyes stung and she squeezed them shut. Pressing her face into the front of his coat, she breathed him in. 

“What’d you wish for?” Alec asked softly. 

“A bigger piece of chocolate,” Ellie lied.

Alec chuckled and brushed his lips over her hair. 

“Next year,” he promised and his lips moved to her hairline and then to her temple. 

The kisses were like breaths of warm air and Ellie didn’t know if he was conscious of what he was doing, but she was very aware of it. Her fingers curled into the back of his coat to draw him closer and her other hand crept up past his collar to curve at the base of his neck. Alec tightened his arms around her and dipped his head lower. His lips found her cheek and paused there. 

The kitchen was pitch-black, save for the glowing clock above the stove. Ellie had exactly three minutes left of her birthday, the one day you were allowed to selfishly indulge in all the sweetness of life. Her ex-husband had destroyed her life, and her sister had taken her kids mistakenly thinking that she was doing Ellie a favor, and Alec had lied to her and fought with her and infuriated her, but he’d taken her to lunch, and made her laugh, and he’d stolen a piece of chocolate for her, and he was the only one that foolishly thought she should celebrate her birthday. 

Turning her face toward his, they found each other in the darkness. His mouth covered hers and she shut her eyes. Time stopped. She swore it did. For one moment she was conscious of nothing but the man holding her. Alec realized his mistake almost immediately and broke the kiss just as the clock changed, but Ellie felt like it was longer. It was easier to stare at the clock, rather than Alec. He had turned away from her and braced himself against the kitchen table. 

“ _Ellie_.” 

“Drink the tea before it gets cold,” she said, and scooping up her tea cup she left him there in the dark. 

As soon as she reached her room, Ellie hastily wiped her eyes and made one last stupid wish. But Alec didn’t follow her upstairs and she didn’t think he ever would again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry but Alec's real reason for hating the water hadn't yet been revealed when I wrote this, so I'm ignoring that too and chalking it up to a fear of the ocean and drowning. The ocean's still pretty scary.


	12. Hurricane Lucy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday SEA. Today more than 120,000 people in the US and 8,000 in the UK alone will be wondering if they'll make their next birthday while they await an organ transplant. Many of them don't. 
> 
> Thanks for the kudos and comments!

The tea was ice cold by the time Alec remembered it. Dragging the chilled cup to his chest, he carried it from the kitchen. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and leaned against the bannister. Gazing up into the shadows, he swallowed the awful tea and wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t stopped himself. Less than thirty steps and an unlocked door separated him from Ellie, but it felt like she was thirty thousand miles away. His heart ached and he slunk back into the sitting room. Sinking down onto the sofa, he set the empty cup down on the coffee table and shut his eyes. How could he have been so stupid? If he’d known eight months ago that this was where they were ultimately headed, he wouldn’t have reached for her on that bloody bench. 

*

Alec woke to muffled voices and a different kind of weight on his chest. The warm lump shifted closer and sticky hands impatiently prodded his face. For one hazy moment, Alec thought of his daughter and that he’d somehow managed to climb into one of the old happy family photographs he spent so much time poring over. Then the toddler nearly poked his eye out. 

“Fred,” Alec sighed and cracked an eye open. A head full of curls and a pair of familiar brown eyes confirmed it. 

“ _Up_!” Fred ordered him and patted his cheek. Alec squinted down at the boy’s eager face, realizing that Miller’s youngest was going to inherit more than just her eyes. He swore the boy already had the makings of that overly friendly exuberance that had irritated Alec when he first arrived. 

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” he told him and wrapped an arm around the boy to prevent him from sliding off his chest. Yawning, he shut his eyes and Fred almost got him again.

“Alright, I’m up!” he groaned. 

Moving Fred to his lap, he sat up painfully. His leg knocked over the empty tea cup and it all came crashing down on him. _Fuck_. Frantically, he checked his watch. Not only had he slept for seven hours, but he’d somehow managed to sleep through Fred’s early arrival. And it wasn’t like the boy could’ve walked home. 

“Where’s Mummy?” he whispered.

Fred pointed toward the doorway and Alec stood, scooping him up as he went. He was outside the kitchen when he heard them. _Shit_. Lucy was here too. 

“Geoffrey’s a nice guy, Ell.”

“I’m not saying that he’s not, Luce,” Ellie sighed. 

“You could do worse,” her sister pointed out sagely. 

Conscious of the creaky floorboards, Alec tiptoed from the kitchen doorway until he was well out of sight. He needed to get the hell out of there. If Lucy came out of that kitchen and saw him Miller would have his head. Fortunately, it was Fred that had discovered him, and if Alec was very, _very_ quiet he could escape this potential mess unscathed. Unfortunately, his co-conspirator was unwilling to cooperate. The child refused to let go of Alec’s neck. 

“I know I’m being pushy, but only because I love you, Ell. Just tell me if you’re attracted to Geoffrey.”

“Of course, I am,” Ellie answered her sister and Alec accidentally hit the creaky floorboard. Jesus, he really didn’t want to hear this, especially after what happened last night. Fred squirmed in Alec’s arms and Alec fervently prayed he could stay quiet for another minute. 

“So, what’s the problem?” Lucy demanded. 

“It’s not _him_ – it’s too soon,” Ellie admitted. 

“It’s never going to be the right time, Ell.” Ellie made a frustrated sound but Lucy barreled on: “I’m not saying you have to marry him or move in with him, all I’m saying is that Geoffrey’s a good man and he has stability. And even though you’re not sure if you’re ready for that or if you want that, I think that right now that’s what you _need_.” 

“A boyfriend isn’t going to solve anything,” Ellie snapped. Fred had relaxed his stranglehold, straining toward the sound of Mummy’s voice, but Alec was listening so raptly that he failed to notice. “I don’t know why you always think that having a bloke is necessary. A woman is perfectly capable -“

“I know that you’re capable, Ell, but you’re miserable. I’ve been here for you for the last eight months and I know more than anyone else that you’re not the same anymore. I’m not saying it has to be Geoffrey, but Ellie, you have to find _someone_ that’s going to make you smile, and laugh, and be there for you and the boys like –“

“Where’s Fred?” Ellie interrupted her.

Alec quickly put the slippery toddler down. But instead of running to Mummy, Fred clung to Alec’s leg, crushing any hope of escape. Yup, he was definitely Miller’s son. Ellie ran out of the kitchen and straight into Alec. And Lucy was right behind her. Ellie was going to murder him if Lucy didn’t do it first. 

“Sorry, I let myself in. The front door was open,” Alec improvised, hoping Ellie would catch on fast.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be here so early. I thought you were coming later,” Ellie responded lightly, but Alec didn’t miss the dark look she gave him as she bent to pick up her son. Fred giggled and hid behind Alec, thinking it was a game. 

“Well, I had some things to do over – over at the station,” Alec lied through his teeth as they both subtly tried to coax Fred out from behind him before her son betrayed them. “I um finished my work early so I came here to see if you were ready, since I was in town anyway –“ Alec tapered off as Ellie suddenly swooped in and grabbed Fred from behind him. She spun around with him, eliciting a shriek of laughter. He watched them longingly, remembering that pleasant moment between sleep and waking when he thought maybe – 

“D.I. Hardy?” Lucy prompted him. Both sisters were frowning at him.

“Sorry,” Alec cleared his throat and clasped his hands in front of him. “I can see that this is a bad time. The paperwork can wait, Miller.” 

“What paperwork?” Lucy asked her sister sharply. 

“Oh, Alec’s still the Senior Investigating Officer on the Latimer case but he’s retiring this week,” Ellie lied smoothly. “He’s got some last minute paperwork that I have to fill out for him that we’ve both been putting off. It’s a bunch of boring bureaucratic stuff, just routine,” she reassured her sister and Lucy relaxed slightly.

“Right,” Alec agreed, nodding. “I’ll come back tomorrow or another day this week,” he offered and headed for the door. His hand was on the doorknob when Lucy called out for him to stop. 

“You mind as well get it over with,” she told Ellie. “Olly’s with Tom, and I can keep an eye on Fred for you until you’re finished.”

“Luce, you don’t have to do that,” Ellie protested, clinging to her son. “You had them all weekend.”

“I don’t mind, Ell. If it means that D.I. Hardy doesn’t have to come back again, then I’m more than happy to help in any way that I can,” Lucy volunteered with a sickening sweet smile for Alec. The smile sliced right through Alec and he sincerely hoped Ellie missed the message. Lucy held out her arms for Fred and Ellie helplessly turned to Alec. 

“You’ll have to come down to the station,” he lied, seeing no other way out.

“Alright,” Ellie said, resigned. Reluctantly, she handed her son off to her sister. “Let me wash up and change. I’ll be quick,” she promised, eyeing them both warily. Then she kissed her son and ran upstairs. 

“I’ll wait outside –“ Alec started to say, but Lucy blocked his path with Fred. He found it remarkable that a woman of such small stature could actually intimidate him. 

“Nonsense, _Alec_ , come on into the kitchen and have a seat.” It wasn’t a suggestion. Alec desperately looked up at the second floor, but he had a feeling that Ellie wasn’t going to be ready anytime soon. Fred wiggled in Lucy’s arms, grasping for something shiny on Alec’s coat, and he lifted the toddler out of her arms.

“Fine,” he growled and led the way back into the kitchen with Fred on his hip. There were quite a few things he’d been dying to say to Ellie’s sister anyway. 

“You look like death,” Lucy informed him cheerfully. 

Alec wished he could say the same about Lucy, but the woman actually looked loads better than the last time he’d seen her months ago. Granted, she’d been severely hungover the only other time their paths had crossed when Ellie had gone M.I.A. in the immediate aftermath of Joe’s sentencing, and Alec had made a single rash attempt to find her at Lucy’s house. This wasn’t the same wisp of a woman that had watched from behind a screened door as Alec had succumbed to his anger and his heart defect on her doorstep. Ellie hadn’t revealed much, but Alec figured that when Ellie crashed after the sentencing it was Lucy that stepped up. In fact, she seemed to be thriving off of Ellie’s misery, and Alec despised her for it. 

“That’s it? After months of waiting to have a go at me, that’s the best insult you can come up with?” he retorted. 

“Most of the words I have for you can’t be said in front of my two year old nephew,” Lucy reminded him. 

“That’s never stopped you before,” Alec pointed out snidely, recalling that heartbreaking conversation he had with Tom two weeks ago. He sat Fred down on the counter. Keeping a steadying hand on the toddler, he grabbed the dishtowel and cleaned the boy’s sticky hands.

“Did you see the paper yesterday?” Lucy inquired. “You’re in it.”

“Which one?” 

“The _Daily Mail_. I’ve actually got the article in my purse.” She fetched it from the chair and dug the paper out for him. Tossing it on the table, she pointed to the small photograph of him at the bottom of the page. Balancing Fred on his opposite hip, Alec unfolded it and read the headline. At least it wasn’t the front page.

“Danny’s birthday, I should’ve remembered,” he berated himself. “They do things like this when there’s nothing sensational enough going on. Drag the whole thing out on every single anniversary.” A worrying thought struck him and his head shot up. 

“Did Ellie see this?” he demanded. Lucy shook her head and Alec returned his attention to the article. He started at the top and skimmed the article as quickly as possible, which was difficult because he was currently holding a toddler.

“Daddy!” Fred pointed to the paper, narrowly missing Alec’s eye again. 

“Yes, Fred,” Alec replied, distractedly ruffling the boy’s curls. He was almost at the end. “They didn’t mention her?” he asked Lucy.

“No, they never do. Thank God. But I always thought it was odd since – “ Lucy stopped in mid-sentence, staring at Alec as if she were seeing him for the first time. “You kept Ellie out of the papers.”

“So far,” Alec conceded. “Being the Worst Cop in Britain finally paid off.”

“Does Ellie know?”

“Everyone in the UK knows,” Alec scoffed. “Your sister even offered to get me a T-shirt.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Lucy said, shaking her head and tapping the tabletop in a manner eerily similar to her sister. “I’m asking you if Ellie knows what you did for her.” 

“Daddy!” Fred repeated more insistently, grabbing at the paper. Alec picked it up for Fred so that he would stop trying to lunge for it and he had an excuse to ignore Ellie’s sister. 

“Do you know where that is?” Alec quizzed him and pointed to the picture of those familiar cliffs. Fred nodded and told him it was the beach. And then when Alec refolded the paper, Fred put his hand on the other picture.

“ _Daddy_!” he said and looked at Alec. There weren’t any pictures of Joe Miller in the article just the eleven year old boy he’d murdered, and Alec Hardy, the man that had stepped in to fill the role he’d once played without even realizing it.

Lucy snatched Fred from him so violently that the boy started to whimper, but Alec was paralyzed. 

“I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, but if you care about my sister and her kids at all, you’ll stay the bloody hell away from her! You’re not good for her.”

“Oh, and I suppose that _you_ know what’s best for her!” he snarled, referring to Lucy’s history with addiction and the poor decisions she’d made. 

“Yes, I do! And so do you! That’s why I’m shocked that you’re still here, because you should know more than anyone else that the very last thing that my sister needs right now is someone even more fucked up that’s going to wind up abandoning her.”

“I wouldn’t -“ he protested.

“Not intentionally,” Lucy interrupted him, softening her voice and soothing Fred. “I realize that now, and that’s why I’m telling you – _Alec_ \- I’m begging you to break it off before it’s too late.” 

“It’s not like that –“ Alec tried to explain, but they were standing in the kitchen in almost the exact same spot where he’d kissed Ellie eight hours ago. Shaking his head, he made a second weak attempt to defend himself. “Ellie and I, we’re not –“ He broke off, unable to define their screwed up relationship, and Lucy was left to fill in the blanks herself. 

“I don’t care what you are or aren’t doing,” she said to him with a ferocity that reminded him of Ellie. “The only thing I care about is my family. And I’ll be damned if I let my sister ruin her life and the lives of those two boys, making the same fucking mistake that I did, by betting on the wrong man.”

Alec stared at her and Lucy gazed right back at him.

“My sister’s tougher than anyone but everyone has a breaking point. There are only so many losses that someone can handle. Don’t make it more complicated than it already is, Alec. Your heart can’t be fixed. Distance yourself before you die and break hers too.”

Alec walked out of the kitchen and out the front door. Grey skies weighed heavily overhead, promising rain at some point. He sat down on the bonnet of Ellie’s car and gazed out over that miserable place. And as he took the last two pills and swallowed them dry, he wished that Ellie’s sister wasn’t so right. 

*

Ellie pulled the door shut behind her and Alec flinched. Hastily, he passed his hands over his face and hair, composing himself. Lucy’s warnings were running rampant through his mind, but he forgot all of them as soon as he saw Ellie. Her hair was damp from the shower and she hadn’t even bothered to control the curls today. They kept falling into her eyes as she searched through her purse for the car keys, becoming more and more agitated. 

“Check your pockets,” Alec suggested, spotting a bulge in her bright orange parka that didn’t seem so ridiculous anymore. Ellie shook her head, flustered, not even bothering to check. She was more focused on backing away from him as he approached her. 

“I must’ve left them on the table,” she said and tried to flee into the safety of the house.

Alec stuck out his arm, going for the car keys but catching her round the waist instead. Ellie stumbled into him and he was momentarily overwhelmed by the feel of her in his arms again and the fresh flowery scent of her recently applied shampoo that was usually so subtle. Her wide eyes met his and Alec couldn’t remember what he was doing. His hand instinctively sought a firmer hold on her waist while the other reflexively clenched over the object in her pocket. 

The car alarm frightened both of them. Ellie leapt back from him and Alec was left holding the keys like a smoking gun.

“Shut it off!” she hollered. 

Alec fumbled with them and Ellie threw herself at him. Wrestling the keys from him, she hit the button again. The car beeped and the alarm stopped. His ears were still ringing when Ellie smacked him upside the head. 

“ _Ow_!” 

“What is the matter with you?” she hissed. 

“The keys were in your pocket!” Alec snapped and crossed his arms over his chest. But he was beginning to wonder if there was something seriously wrong with him. He’d almost kissed Ellie, again. Looking beyond Ellie, he swore he could see Lucy glaring at him. As if she knew exactly what he was thinking, Ellie nervously glanced over her shoulder at the cottage. This time Alec was certain that one of the curtains moved. 

Shaking her head, Ellie swiped the curls back from her forehead and kept her hands pressed there. She couldn’t even look at him. 

“I _really_ don’t like you right now.”

“I’m sorry,” Alec apologized and pinched the bridge of his nose. “If I’d known your sister was going to show up at eight in the morning and threaten me –“

“She threatened you?” Ellie lowered her hands and gaped at him as if this revelation genuinely surprised her. 

“Miller, she hates me more than you do right now, and if we don’t leave now she’s going to come out here and kick me off the property herself.” 

Ellie almost smiled at his reluctant admission, and Alec knew that she could picture it in her head and was entertaining the notion as suitable punishment. There was no way he could face Miller and her sister together, he could barely handle them on their own. Latching onto the car door behind him, he held it open for her. Mercifully, the car alarm didn’t go off again. 

“Let’s go,” he urged and ushered her into the car. “Please,” he added. Ellie rolled her eyes and yanked the door shut. Alec walked around the front of the car, half expecting her to run him over. But she waited until he was inside and buckled before turning the key. 

“Where are we going?” she asked as the engine came to life. 

“Anywhere,” Alec answered.

“Do you want me to drive you home?” Ellie asked him as they pulled out onto the road.

Alec didn’t know where home was anymore. Sandbrook had been home, until Vicky destroyed it, and then it had been Keira, but she didn’t want to see him and Alec was exhausted. He kept migrating from hotel to hotel, hoping that he wouldn’t have to acknowledge what Ellie had brutally pointed out to him on the cliffs. He was homeless. Last night, Alec had thrust a candle and a piece of chocolate at Ellie, wanting to give her some relief from the ghostly memories of happier birthdays that lurked in the shadows. But when Ellie blew out that candle, she embraced him instead of the past, reminding him of what he hadn’t even realized he’d been missing. He had kissed her in the dark and it had felt like coming home. Broadchurch with its deadly cliffs, it’s eroding beaches, it’s stormy waters, and it’s stupid, narrow-minded, nosy people had become the closest thing to a home because Ellie and her boys were there. And it scared the hell out of him. 

“Alec?” 

Lucy was right, he was too attached. He needed to hit the brakes, literally. 

“Pull over,” Alec told her. 

Ellie called him something unflattering under her breath, but she turned off the main road and parked the car in an abandoned lot. In the distance, Alec could just make out the foundation of a house that had never been built. He found it ironic that he had to do this while looking at someone else’s failed attempt at creating a home. It was probably the same moron that had transplanted that gross thorny monstrosity he’d encountered on the cliffs last night.

“I’m sorry about last night and this morning,” Alec apologized in a rush. 

“Alec-“ 

“It won’t happen again,” he promised. The words left behind a bitter aftertaste and he couldn’t look at Ellie. It had started to drizzle at some point and rain spattered the windshield. Alec was reluctant to venture out into it, even though it was probably warmer out there then in the car. His stiff apology had left them both cold. 

“I can get a car from here,” he offered and unbuckled his seatbelt. 

“Oh, really?” 

Alec turned to find Ellie looking at him with something akin to mischief. Her eyes crinkled at the corners and her lips twitched with a suppressed smile. Alec reached into his coat and discovered what was so funny. 

“I must’ve left it at your house,” Alec groaned. “Miller, I’m –“ 

“You can stop apologizing, Alec,” Ellie cut him off. Rummaging through her purse, she put the phone charger and his mobile phone on the console between them. He shoved the charger into his pocket and Ellie handed the phone to him.

“I found it on the floor,” she admitted guiltily. A nasty crack had splintered the screen of his mobile. “I might’ve stepped on it,” she added unnecessarily. Blushing, her eyes darted away from his. Alec ran his fingers over the phone and it lit up. 

“It still works?” Alec wondered. 

“Yeah, I checked,” Ellie confirmed, quickly clarifying: “I mean I charged it for you and it looks like it still works. I didn’t test it out or anything.” Her face was still a pretty shade of pink and Alec suspected that she wasn’t telling him something. He wanted to know, but he didn’t dare ask. 

“Thanks, Miller.” He put his hand on the door. 

“Alec, wait.” Ellie stayed him with a hand on his arm. Alec looked down at her hand and then up at her. She returned both hands to the steering wheel but she wasn’t about to let him go that easily. 

“It’s raining, and I have to do the shopping anyway. I can drop you off there, and it’s probably closer…” she trailed off expectantly, and Alec couldn’t argue with her rationale. He’d been searching for an excuse anyway. He let go of the door and reached for the seatbelt.

“Alright?” 

“Alright.” Alec nodded and they both relaxed and released a breath they hadn’t realized they’d been holding. 

The air felt a little warmer between them but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Perhaps, Lucy’s fears were wholly unfounded. One kiss in the dark between friends (or whatever the hell they were) wasn’t going to kill anyone. They’d survived worse, overcoming hatred, differences, and tragedies. It was silly of him to think that something so small could make them implode. 

“Did you sleep on the sofa?” Ellie inquired innocently.

“Obviously,” Alec ground out. She was taunting him after that rant he went on yesterday about the state of her furniture. 

“Was it comfy?” 

“Shut up, Miller.”

Ellie giggled and Alec almost smiled. 

*

They lapsed into silence until Ellie pulled into the parking lot of a market. There was a strip of shops adjoining the market and wedged in between them was a café that Alec could sit and wait inside until his car arrived. It had stopped raining, and they both got out and blinked up at the grey sky.

“Come here, Alec, you’ve got something on your face.” Exasperated, she took his face between her hands. Licking her thumb, she scrubbed the spot clean. Alec scowled but patiently humored her maternal instincts until her hand slid into his hair. “How’d you get it behind your ear?” she chortled as her fingernails lightly scraped over the sensitive spot. He seized her wrist to stop her from going further. 

“Your son woke me up,” he grumbled and dropped her wrist as if it burned, “Tried to gouge my eyes out and strangle me.” Ellie paled. Christ, he needed to stop sticking his foot in his mouth. Instead of fumbling another apology, he lifted a hand to her face and brushed his thumb over her cheek. Of course, that was when he remembered that Ellie had already showered and that he wasn’t fooling anyone. 

“Strawberry jam?” he inquired, keeping up the façade and licking his thumb for one last swipe over the imaginary spot. Ellie tasted her own thumb and rolled her eyes.

“Grape,” she corrected him, probably wondering how he was ever promoted to Detective Inspector. At least some things never changed. She stepped back from him, folding her arms over her chest. 

“Do you think Lucy believed any of that bullshit?” Ellie asked, biting her lip. 

“I don’t know, maybe.” Alec shrugged and scratched his neck. 

He looked up at the grey skies overhead, tracking the gulls circling above. There were probably more here in the parking lot of a market than there were at the actual beach. Another one watched them beadily from behind a carelessly abandoned shopping cart and a pile of picked over scraps. 

“What exactly did my sister say to you?” 

He dragged his fingers through his hair and wished he never fell asleep on that stupid sofa. 

“She told me to piss off.”

“That’s it?” 

Alec hesitated. All he wanted to do was forget it happened, but Lucy’s warnings were banging around in his head as well as the memory of that difficult conversation he’d had with Tom about his heart condition. This wasn’t the first time Lucy had made her case against Alec, not even close. It hadn’t even occurred to Alec that Lucy was single-mindedly trying to fix Ellie in the only way she knew how, just like him. Their methods couldn’t have been more opposing, but their goal was the same. They both wanted Ellie to be happy. He studied the woman before him and tried to see her objectively. Was she really that miserable? Was his frequent presence in her home holding her back from something she needed? Alec didn’t want to walk away, not yet, but Lucy had proved herself to be a force of nature that he couldn’t ignore. Lucy loved her sister, fiercely. He had shattered Ellie after the sentencing, and it was Lucy that had struggled with Ellie to stich her life together in the weeks that followed. He owed her that much. 

“Your sister’s worried about you,” he said at last, sighing. Ellie poked at the pile of litter with her boot, sending a plastic cup skittering towards him. 

“How long were you standing outside the kitchen this morning?” she demanded as Alec stopped the plastic cup with his shoe. 

“Long enough,” Alec grunted, and kicked the plastic cup so hard that it went past her and startled the beady eyed gull into flight. 

“Oh, my God, you overheard everything!” Ellie moaned, her face reddening. “I’m going to kill her,” she said between gritted teeth, and balled her hands into fists. 

“What if she’s right?” Alec asked the pavement. 

“What do you mean?” 

A sudden gust of wind scattered the gull’s hoard of scraps and he trapped a balled up piece of paper underfoot. Passing it between his feet, he chose his words carefully. “It’s been almost eight months, Miller. Maybe it’s time to move forward even if it’s the last thing you want right now.”

He kicked the ball in her direction and Ellie automatically stuck out her foot and deflected it. Alec stepped up to retrieve it but Ellie got there first. 

“You’re the last person I expected to side with her,” she said, holding it captive beneath her foot. 

“I’m not,” he insisted, trying to stay neutral. Ellie stared him down and Alec shoved his hands into his pockets. “You don’t smile anymore,” he blurted out, surprising both of them. He hadn’t realized that was what had bothered him the most about the conversation he’d overheard. 

Ellie frowned, confirming it, and the crease deepened between her eyebrows. Alec had to resist the urge to smooth it out. 

“When I first met you, you smiled so much that I wanted to knock it right off your face,” he confessed, shocking no one. 

“My husband then left me for an eleven year old that he murdered with his bare hands,” Ellie reminded him. “You may find this hard to believe but it didn’t make me happy.”

“And you’ll never be the same. I know that, and your sister knows that too, although, she’s in denial,” he sighed again, forcing himself not to get sidetracked. Blimey, this was hard for him. If it was anyone other than Ellie, he would’ve happily thrown in the towel and never came back.

“When was the last time you went out?” he tried again. 

“We’re out right now –“

“I don’t count,” Alec cut in, driving home his point. “And your family doesn’t count either.” 

Bewilderment softened the sharp frown lines, but now he wasn’t making any sense at all. Distracted, Ellie had released the balled up piece of garbage and Alec caught it beneath his shoe and dragged it back with him. He focused on rolling it forward and backward again, hoping the rhythm would steady him enough to do what was right.

“I think you should go out again with Gregory.”

“It’s _Geoffrey_!” she corrected him automatically. “And he’s not –“

“He’s not a part of your old life!” Alec spat. “You need to let it go, and if talking to this bloke is what it takes then do it.” 

Ellie was shell-shocked. Alec wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them. Instead, he took a deep breath and took another step back. 

“You can’t just stay holed up in Broadchurch for the rest of your life. It’s not your home anymore, not without Joe. And he’s not coming back. I made damn sure of that.” Alec drew back his foot to strike the ball and Ellie stole it right out from under him. 

“I can decide what’s best for me,” she said firmly.

“No one’s saying you can’t,” Alec clarified. “Your sister just wants you to be happy. I think she misses the old you that she could beg money off of without feeling guilty.” Ellie rolled her eyes. 

“What about you?” she asked, taking her foot off the ball. Alec dove for it, but Ellie slid it behind her with a fancy twist of her ankle. 

“What about me?” He was calculating his next move.

“You can’t honestly expect me to believe that you actually _want_ me to date Geoffrey after you –“ Ellie faked left and went right, but Alec had already outmaneuvered her. She came up hard against his chest, the words dying on her parted lips, and Alec suddenly didn’t give a damn about some childish game or Geoffrey or Lucy. 

“Go on,” he dared her. All it would take was one word from her, or one single move in either direction, and his defenses would either solidify or crumble. Lucy’s heart was in the right place, but Alec wasn’t selfless enough to completely ignore his own. Ellie was right, this decision was _hers_. And it was about bloody time that Alec let her know that. 

He had already made a move, now it was her turn. But Ellie didn’t move forwards or backwards, instead she grinned and neatly sidestepped him altogether. He almost lost his balance as she expertly took the ball out from underneath his foot and struck it with everything she had in her. It flew across the parking lot, just missing the rubbish bin she’d obviously been aiming for. 

“I was so close!” she groaned dramatically as if she’d just blown their chance of qualifying for the World Cup. Bending over, she rested her hands on her knees. Alec went to her and patted her on the back consolingly. Ellie hung her head and her hood slid forward. Gently, he tugged it back from her hair and uncovered her face. Her eyes met his and Alec recognized the same defeat that he felt. 

“I can’t win, can I?” she sighed and straightened up beside him. 

“It was a good shot,” Alec complimented her. His hand was still on her back and she was leaning into him. 

“I’ll text Geoffrey tonight and ask him to lunch.”

Alec’s heart sunk but Lucy’s last words were still fresh in his mind. It would be good for Ellie to get out again with someone that wasn’t so caught up in the maelstrom that had wrecked Ellie’s old life. Besides, it would keep Lucy off his back and buy him a little more time. Eventually, though, he’d have to face the fact that Ellie’s sister was right about one thing. But he didn’t have to think of that not yet, not today.

“What time do you have to be back?” he asked her and peeked at his watch.

“I don’t know. I kind of hate my sister right now for converting you. I’m probably going to tell her that Jenkinson dragged us into a long meeting or that you spilt tea all over the paperwork again.”

“If I remember correctly,” Alec recalled, going back about nine months. “ _You_ spilt _your_ tea on _your_ paperwork.”

“It was two in the morning and you startled me! I thought everyone had already left the station. You didn’t even offer to help me clean it up,” she said, shaking her head. 

“Yeah, but I finished filling out the paperwork for you,” Alec reminded her, sliding his hand across her back until his arm was around her shoulders. Ellie stared at him as they casually strolled toward the market. 

“That was you?”

“Of course, it was me!” Alec insisted. “Who else would have done it?”

Ellie blinked at him.

“I always assumed that there was an office fairy or that it was so late that I was hallucinating.”

Alec rolled his eyes. 

“Come on,” he urged her, steering her past the market and toward the café wedged between two shops. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

Ellie beamed up at him and Alec squeezed her shoulder. He opened the door for her and a ridiculous little bell tinkled overhead. It was a Sunday morning and the café was full. Everyone looked up and Ellie missed a step. Alec caught her against his side and Ellie relaxed as most of the people went back to their food, and their conversations, and their ordinary lives. Perhaps, someone had recognized them, but they gave no indication. 

“We can go somewhere else,” he suggested quietly, rubbing his hand over her back.

“No,” Ellie said. She led him to the only empty table, right smack in the middle of the room where everyone could see them. 

And they sat down together and for the first time, Alec and Ellie made it through a cup of tea and a meal without a single argument or causing a scene. There were no silly toasts to fake wives, no rude reporters, and the waitress didn’t try to flirt with Alec, and the man sitting behind them by himself that Alec thought Ellie might’ve recognized, left without a word. There was no paperwork, and they acted as if the case and all the other issues stemming from it hadn’t existed either. Instead, they talked about Tom and Fred, and when Ellie asked him what Keira was like at those ages, Alec’s heart didn’t stop. It felt like a lazy Sunday morning and it was nice. 

“Don’t get used to this,” he warned her as he picked up the check again. Ellie gave him another one of those smiles that he hadn’t even realized he missed. And Alec thought that he could definitely get used to that smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't get mad at me. Trust me that this is one hundred percent Alec/Ellie but no one ever said that the course of true love did run smoothly. Feel free to give me some constructive criticism.


	13. Natural Disasters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took something very, very small from S2. It's in the second part of this chapter and hardly a spoiler, but I figured I'd warn you. Thanks for the Kudos and comments!

Ten days later, Alec and Ellie were back in the same café. This time the café was almost completely empty, they’d chosen a booth by the window, Fred had joined them, and the table really was covered in paperwork. Ellie had Fred on her lap and had been trying to entice the picky toddler to eat the apple slices she was offering him for the last ten minutes. Alec had Ellie’s laptop in front of him and was glancing between the screen and the file that had exploded all over the table at some point. It was no use. He could make no more sense than Ellie could of the finances that Joe had mainly taken care of during the time they’d been together. It was a disorganized mess. 

Taking off his glasses, he tossed them down on the table. He pinched the bridge of his nose hard and expelled a breath. 

“This is a disaster.” 

“I should extend the lease,” Ellie said, giving up on the apple slices as Fred spat out another one. “I can afford it at least for another six months even with the rate hike. Besides, Samuel’s a friend of Lucy; he’ll never evict me if I’m late paying him.” 

“Are you going back to work?” he asked her and busied his hands with collecting the paperwork and putting them into some kind of order. After her paid suspension expired, Ellie had found a couple of temp jobs through the same temp agency Lucy used, but they’d been part time and they hadn’t lasted more than a month or two. She had been relying heavily on the profit she’d made with the sale of the house, but these funds wouldn’t last her forever. 

“I think Jenkinson would take you back,” he said.

“I can’t make her do that,” Ellie sighed. She was cleaning up Fred’s mess. “And I don’t think I could do it anyway. If you were still my boss, maybe I would’ve tried, but I don’t want to deal with someone new, or someone that’s not new and thinks that I _knew_ –“ She trailed off because she didn’t need to explain herself to him. He’d been there. 

“Ellie, you’re innocent. I made sure everyone knew that,” he assured her, closing the file and folding his arms over it. 

“It doesn’t matter Alec, you know that. No one ever wants to see the truth,” she said, bouncing Fred on her knee. Alec leaned toward her and picked a piece of apple off her shirt that she missed. He added it to the rest of the rejected bits on the plate. He wondered if Fred had eaten anything. 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Ellie hugged her son and hid her face in the boy’s curls. 

Alec hated seeing her so lost. Sometimes, he wished that he could turn back the clocks and step in before Joe fixed Danny’s split lip and started a relationship that would end everything. But Alec knew that even if he did somehow command that power there was a chance that Joe would’ve headed down that destructive path anyway. 

“Miller, I’m sure you made a lot of friends over the years, and although I realize that most of them are here in Broadchurch, I think you’d be surprised by how many are still willing to help you.”

Ellie poked her head out from behind the restless toddler.

“Right, I’m sure they’re going to help the copper that slept with the killer of an eleven year old boy. Come on, Alec! You know how people feel about pedophiles especially people that know the Latimers.” 

“I know you, Ellie, and you would’ve stopped it if you could have.” Alec held her gaze. “I can’t be the only one that knows you that feels that way.”

“You don’t count, Alec,” Ellie threw his own words back at him and they sounded a lot harsher on her tongue. 

“Of course,” he conceded, nodding. He reached for his glasses and Fred slapped a pudgy hand down on them. The toddler laughed and stole them off the table. 

“ _Frederick Alexander_!” Ellie scolded him and Alec’s eyebrows shot up.

Frightened, Frederick Alexander dodged his mother and slithered underneath the table with Alec’s glasses. Ellie growled and prepared to crawl beneath the table, but Alec stopped her. 

“Leave him, Miller, I’ve got him.” He scooted over to the end of the booth, dragged over a chair from the nearest table, and stretched out his legs in a makeshift barrier. Ellie did the same, although her legs weren’t quite long enough. Alec was very conscious of her leg touching his, and he was grateful that Ellie was preoccupied checking that Fred was safe and content in his new lair. 

“He’ll break them,” she warned him, embarrassed. He waved her off. 

“I’ve got a spare at the hotel, but I’m afraid that I won’t be much use to you now,” he admitted sheepishly and pushed the file toward her. Ellie smirked. 

“You did that on purpose,” she accused him. 

“I didn’t do anything!” he protested. “That was your son Frederick Alexander.” 

Ellie blushed and tapped the file.

“I wanted to name him Alex, I’ve always liked that name,” she confessed, biting her lip.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Alec chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. 

Fred roared beneath the table, pretending to be a lion in its den. Alec grabbed one of the rejected apple slices and held his hand out beneath the table. Fred snatched it from him with a ferocious growl and Ellie laughed. They fed Fred by hand until half the plate was gone and their little lion cub got distracted again. Fred’s attention span wasn’t going to hold out much longer and eventually Ellie would have to pick up Tom from school, but a part of him wished that they could stay there in that sunny booth in the café for the rest of the afternoon. Looking at Ellie though, her head bent over the file and a concentrated crease between her eyes, he knew it couldn’t last. 

“Miller, didn’t you say um George was an accountant?”

“ _Geoffrey_ ,” Ellie corrected him, frowning over the file “I don’t understand you. You remember that he’s an accountant, and yet I’ve told you his name over and over again and it continues to escape you.”

Alec lunged across the table to shut the file on her. She glowered at him and crossed her arms over her chest. 

“Don’t worry I wasn’t reading that.” 

“Miller, he’s an accountant!” He picked up the file and shook it at her. 

“I know!” She rolled her eyes. “God, what is your problem with him?”

“I don’t have a problem with him,” he scoffed.

“’Course not.” Ellie shifted so that her knee was pressed against his knee. “I forgot that you did a complete 180 and you’re suddenly part of the Geoffrey fan club. What on earth did Lucy threaten you with?” she asked, her eyes scrutinizing him. 

Alec held the file up between them like a wall but it was only made of paper. Paper could burn. 

“She didn’t threaten me with anything,” he said slowly. 

“Don’t lie to me, Alec.” Ellie tore the file out of his hands and tossed it aside. She sat forward, her thigh warm against his. “Tell me the truth.”

Lucy hadn’t threatened him with anything other than the truth. That cold hard truth was the only thing that terrified him more than Ellie’s blazing brown eyes. That and possibly –

“Ellie?” 

Alec glanced over his shoulder and Ellie swore under her breath. A very familiar and very unwelcome face had inexplicably materialized in the café. 

“Hiya, Geoffrey,” Ellie greeted him cheerily, her smile fixed. 

Alec hadn’t noticed the time but with the lunch hour upon them the café was slowly filling and proving itself to be a place of reputable takeaway for many of the offices nearby. Geoffrey, they later discovered was coincidentally a frequent lunch patron. 

“I thought that was you.” Geoffrey beamed and pulled out the chair at the end of the table. Fred suddenly ran out, having crawled through the tangle of Alec and Ellie’s legs while they were distracted. Ellie stood up and Alec reached for him, but Geoffrey caught him.

“This little monster must be Fred,” he joked and crouched down in front of her son. Ignoring Ellie’s apology, Geoffrey plucked what remained of Alec’s glasses off of Fred’s face and laughed. One of the lenses was cracked and the other was missing, and although they’d fared better than Alec expected in the hands of a toddler, they were beyond repair. “Are these yours, Freddie?” Geoffrey asked the boy, bemused. 

“They’re mine,” Alec spoke up and Geoffrey seemed to notice him for the first time. 

Ellie grabbed Fred and shot Alec a wordless warning that he ignored. The two men stood up to face each other. Whenever Alec recalled the bloke he’d met for a blink a month ago, he always pictured a man that looked almost identical to Joe Miller, but now seeing Geoffrey in a new environment and a professional suit and tie, it was obvious that though the two men did share some physical attributes, Geoffrey was different. 

“You must be Alec.” Geoffrey held out his hand and offered him his broken glasses. 

“We’ve met,” Alec reminded him, but he couldn’t ignore the feeling that they weren’t the same people they were a month ago. Ellie had said that they’d gotten off on the wrong foot. Taking his glasses, he wondered if a fresh perspective could change his opinion of Geoffrey. 

“I hope I’m not interrupting something,” Geoffrey said, anxiously glancing between Alec and Ellie. 

“No,” Alec assured him. “I was just leaving.” 

“Alec,” Ellie began but Geoffrey blundered on: “Don’t leave on my account, I’ve got all afternoon, and you should at least finish your tea.” Alec had forgotten all about the tea but Geoffrey was right, it would be stupid if he left without drinking any of it or made Ellie pay for it. He reached for his wallet and Ellie ordered them both to sit down. 

Alec could’ve given her the money and left, but that same curiosity that had compelled him to introduce himself to Geoffrey as well as that nagging possibility that Lucy could be right about Geoffrey, made him stay a little longer. During the time it took him to finish half his tea, he learned a lot more about Ellie’s suitor and the nature of their relationship. Alec’s presence clearly unnerved Geoffrey but he was comfortable with Fred, despite being unmarried and childless. Apparently, Geoffrey had raised his brothers and sisters and quipped that he was still raising them, even though the youngest was in her twenties by now. Now that they were older and he was done with traveling for work, he was ready to take care of someone else, someone like Ellie and her boys. Ellie’s bright façade never wavered, but Alec noted that Geoffrey earned a genuine laugh from her at least twice in that short time, that she was still attracted to him, and that they did in fact share a variety of interests. By the time Alec made his excuses and threw down some bills, he had a much better understanding of what Lucy saw in Geoffrey and more importantly what _Ellie_ saw in Geoffrey. 

Geoffrey left to use the restroom, presumably to give them some privacy, but Alec and Ellie were uncomfortably quiet in his absence. Alec wished he felt a lick of that burning jealousy he’d felt on almost every other occasion he’d encountered Ellie’s bloke in person or in conversation, but instead he felt that troubling numbness that seeped in like the knowledge of his wife’s affair that precluded the destruction of the Sandbrook case and his old life. Perhaps, it wouldn’t be today or next week or next month or anytime soon, but ultimately Alec would lose Ellie just like he lost his daughter, and there was very little he could do to prevent that from happening. 

Alec quickly collected his coat and knocked the file off the table as he was sliding out of the booth. He knelt down to retrieve it and Ellie slipped out of the booth to join him on the floor. Their hands brushed as they silently worked to put it back in order. 

“I’m sorry about your glasses,” she apologized softly. Their heads were bent close together. “I’ll pay for another pair.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Alec dismissed her and gathered up the file in one hand. He automatically slipped his other hand round her elbow and helped her up. 

“I want to,” Ellie insisted as they rose to their feet. Alec let go of her elbow and reached around her to stop Fred before he could get his hands into Geoffrey’s lunch. He shut the takeaway box and kept his hand on it, much to the toddler’s chagrin. 

“I can’t believe I actually miss this age,” Alec said, smiling slightly at Fred’s dramatic pout. “Keira was terrible at two. I think I spent more time sleeping at my desk than I did sleeping in my own bed.”

Ellie grinned.

“Tom was a demon child but somehow we managed.” Her grin faded because this time there was no one else to help her, not yet. Geoffrey was going to return any second but Alec needed to say something. 

“You can do this, Ellie, you’ve been doing it for the last eight months,” he reminded her, nodding toward the boy that was watching the takeaway box hungrily and was about five seconds from springing onto the table to steal it from Alec just like he did with his glasses. It probably wasn’t the best example. 

“I know I _can_ , but sometimes, I _want_ someone else to be there for them and for me,” she admitted in a small voice as if she were humiliated that she had to voice something so human aloud. Alec threw the file down on the bench he’d just vacated, so that he could take her arm and turn her toward him. 

“You are one of the most independent strongest compassionate women I’ve ever met. If anyone can do this on their own, Ellie, it’s you,” he told her, willing her to understand. “But you don’t have to be alone. You’ve got Lucy –“

“It’s not the same,” Ellie interrupted him, sighing. “And if I decide to move away…” Alec’s hand moved to clasp her shoulder and bring her a little bit closer, trying to convey with a touch everything that he couldn’t say. 

“You’ll meet someone or perhaps you already have,” he suggested and searched her face for a reaction, but Ellie gave nothing away. “Maybe it’s only a matter of relearning to let people in.”

“I’ll never be able to trust anyone again,” Ellie argued and looked at him directly. It was a valid point but complete horseshit, because Alec knew that Ellie trusted _him_. Fred finally pounced on the takeaway container and Alec swept the child off the table and into his arms. Ellie barely blinked; checking to make sure the contents of the takeaway container hadn’t spilt, and confirming the fact that they’d come a long way since that night she nearly murdered him in Fred’s nursery. She now trusted Alec completely with her son. It was terrifying how much faith she had in him, and she wasn’t even aware of it. Alec was beginning to understand why Lucy was so alarmed. 

“I could take him for a little while,” he offered before he could stop himself. The toddler was warm against his chest and it almost alleviated the ache there. “It would give you some time with Greg.” Ellie didn’t even bother correcting him, she was frowning again. Alec grabbed the file off the bench and put it back on the table. 

“Have him take a look at that,” Alec advised her as Geoffrey rejoined them, finishing up a phone call. 

“Don’t go far,” Ellie called after him. Alec walked out with Fred and left the pair alone together. 

Once outside, he looked back. Ellie had the file open on the table between them. Geoffrey was laughing and shaking his head at something, but Ellie had that smile on her face, the one that Alec had nearly forgotten about. 

“Mummy!” Fred pointed out to him, dragging his attention away from the couple. 

“You’ve got the best Mum in the world, you know that?” Alec tweaked the toddler’s nose and the boy giggled. Alec smiled because Fred already knew all this, and one day, hopefully soon and hopefully often, the boy would tell her. 

*

“D.I. Hardy?” 

Alec startled awake and spilt the bag of crisps that Fred had left in his lap. The girl in front of him blurred and he squeezed his eyes shut. For a half second he thought it was his daughter and the sharp pain in his chest almost crushed him. Inhaling slowly and deeply, he opened his eyes again and found a different but more solid ghost staring back at him. 

“Chloe Latimer?” he rasped. The teenager nodded. Alec fished the pills out from his coat and swallowed two because he was definitely going to need them for this conversation. 

“Fred?” he inquired, panicking. 

“I thought that was him,” Chloe acknowledged and inclined her head toward him. “He’s sleeping underneath the bench.”

Alec checked to be sure and the sudden vertigo almost sent him head first into the grass. At least Fred was fine. He rested his forearms on his thighs and shut his eyes again. 

“Are you alright?” Chloe asked him anxiously. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. She sat down on the bench beside him and he could sense her hand hovering over his shoulder. After a minute, he was able to sit back and open his eyes. 

“I didn’t think the rumors were true,” she commented, wide-eyed. 

“Which ones?” Alec asked in spite of himself. Chloe fidgeted and Alec already knew he’d made a mistake asking her, but it was too late now.

“Are you really dying?” Chloe asked him, curiosity and pity warring somewhere underneath all that makeup. Alec knew exactly who was responsible for that rumor, but two pills weren’t going to be enough to discuss that one. He had a nasty suspicion that the next one was going to be just as bad, but he asked anyway. 

“What’s the other one?” 

Chloe ducked her head and played with the many bracelets she had on her wrist. Alec remembered vaguely paying for something similar that his ex-wife had picked out for him to give to Keira for her sixteenth birthday. She’d sent him the link so that all he had to do was put in a card number and the address. Vicky had said she liked it, so he thought that maybe she might be wearing them too. 

“A lot of people think that you and – um - Ellie are together and have been since you made the arrest,” Chloe said at last. Alec didn’t like the way she stumbled over Ellie’s name as if she were used to calling her something else. He could only imagine the things that they were saying about her. 

“It’s not true,” Alec told her honestly. Although in the last few weeks, God knew there was an annoyingly persistent voice in his head that wanted it to be. He thought he’d done a fairly good job silencing it. 

“It’s not that big of a leap,” Chloe defended herself and the rest of the nosy, small-minded individuals that made up that stupid town. “You’re always here and you’re always together.” 

“Yeah, well, maybe if all of her friends and neighbors hadn’t turned their backs on her and abandoned her after she worked so bloody hard to protect them from that murdering son of a bitch that destroyed Danny’s life and hers, I wouldn’t have to be,” he spat. His temper flared up and the medicine hadn’t quite kicked in, causing his heart to flutter in his chest. He slumped over again, and he supposed that it was that more than anything else that saved him from Chloe’s ire. The girl was visibly shocked and his symptoms made her nervous. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have –“ he gasped, drawing in another shuddering breath. He lifted one hand to his forehead and forced himself to calm down so that he could explain himself, not for his sake but for Ellie’s and for Danny’s. “Ellie and I both worked on that case. I know that you think that she knew, but she was with me every step of the way. She cared about Danny, and your parents, and you more than anyone else, and she would’ve stopped it if she could’ve. You need to understand that.” He turned and looked at her.

“I do,” Chloe admitted, toying with the bracelets again. “But it’s hard. I want - I _need_ to blame someone and she was sleeping next to him the whole time, surely she must’ve seen _something_ –“ She stopped herself as if suddenly remembering who she was talking to. Squirming, she rearranged the bracelets again, her ears tipped with red as he continued to stare at her. Christ, she was just a girl. She’d been through hell and back, but she was still only a child. 

“You know I had – have a daughter your age,” he informed her, peering down through the gaps in the wooden bench at Fred. 

“You do?” Alec nodded and almost chuckled at the disbelief and horror in Chloe’s voice. He usually got that kind of response, even the Millers had been shocked when he told them he was a father. And it was no wonder their son was currently napping beneath a bench under his watch. 

“If anything ever happened to her and I thought that one of my friends could’ve been inadvertently involved in some way or form in her death...” He shook his head. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to forgive them,” he said truthfully. 

“Then why do you expect it from me?” Chloe demanded. 

“I don’t,” Alec said, sitting back and looking at the girl beside him. It was hard to believe that his daughter was almost the same age. He hoped that by leaving his daughter had been spared from carrying a weight like that on her thin shoulders. “I don’t expect anything from you. But Ellie still cares about you and your parents, and she’ll never forgive herself for not seeing it and not being able to stop it from happening. She’s innocent. Joe Miller is the only guilty party. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth.”

“I’m not sure if I can.” Chloe sniffed and wiped at her nose. 

“I know, but I hope that one day you’ll _try_.”

The sun breached the clouds and Alec rubbed at his eyes. Fred popped out from underneath the bench with grass in his hair and mud on his clothes. Ellie was going to kill him. He tugged at Alec’s leg, smearing dirt on his trousers and causing Chloe to laugh. Startled, Fred tried to duck back beneath the bench, but Alec seized him and began brushing the worst of the dirt and grass off of him. 

“Do you remember me Fred?” Chloe asked, holding out her arms to the toddler. Alec wasn’t sure if Fred did or not, but he took an unsteady step toward the teenager who immediately lifted him into her arms. She hugged the boy to her and Fred wrapped his little arms around her neck. 

“I’ve missed you Fred,” Chloe whispered to the boy and Alec knew that she was missing her own brother. Fred was fascinated by Chloe’s dangling sparkly earrings and Alec stretched out a hand before the toddler ripped it out of her earlobe. Chloe just laughed and distracted the boy with one of her bracelets instead. 

“Mum had a girl,” Chloe shared with Alec. “Her name’s Elizabeth.” 

“Tell them congratulations,” Alec said. 

“You can tell Ellie,” Chloe allowed.

“Or you could tell her yourself,” Alec cleared his throat. Chloe froze with Fred in her lap and her bracelet in his hands. Alec watched over her head as Ellie stormed through the parking lot toward him. She had obviously been looking for them for a while and she was furious. 

“I told you not to go far!” she yelled at him. Alec got up from the bench to head her off, but it was unnecessary. She halted as soon as she recognized Chloe Latimer. Alec took a step toward Ellie as all of the color was washed from her face, and then went for Fred instead. Chloe was hunched over Fred. Her face was hidden but her shoulders were shaking. 

“I can take him, go on, she won’t bother you,” he assured the emotional girl and sat down on the bench to try to gently extract Fred from the tangle of the girl’s long hair and shiny jewelry. He put a hand on Fred and Chloe suddenly stood, taking him with her. 

“No,” she said. “I can – I’ll carry him.” Her mascara was running but she was determined. Hoisting Fred higher on her hip, she walked over to where Ellie had stopped. Alec let the girl go to Ellie, remaining where he was on the bench. He was concerned but wanted to give them some semblance of privacy. 

“Chloe,” Ellie greeted her.

“Fred’s gotten so big,” Chloe remarked, surprising them all. “He must’ve been half the size when I last saw him. I don’t think he remembers me but that’s okay, right Fred? We’re friends again now.” Fred giggled as Chloe made a face at him. 

“He likes you, he’s always liked you,” Ellie commented, smiling at her son. 

“I can’t wait until Elizabeth’s this age and we can play,” Chloe said. “Oh, Mum had a girl by the way, Elizabeth.”

“After your grandmother?” Ellie inquired, a fact that Alec hadn’t picked up on. “She must’ve been pleased.” 

“She wasn’t, actually, tried to talk Mum into naming her something awful after some dead relative or obscure saint or something,” Chloe said and rolled her eyes. “But Mum insisted.”

“I’m glad she did, it’s a lovely name,” Ellie agreed, smiling at Chloe this time. “Congrats on getting a little sister, I remember when –“ she broke off and Alec winced, but Ellie forged onward. “I’m so happy for you and your parents, I really am.”

“Thanks, I’ll tell them,” Chloe said hesitantly, and they all knew she probably wouldn’t. Alec felt the change in the atmosphere and readied himself to step in before Ellie tried too hard and pushed the girl too far. But Ellie as always surprised him, and he’d underestimated Chloe. 

“Thanks for looking after Fred,” Ellie said so softly that Alec almost missed it.

“No problem, I miss him,” Chloe blurted out. 

“I do too,” Ellie admitted and Alec knew they weren’t talking about Fred anymore. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about Danny and wish that I could go back to that night, but I didn’t know. I never saw it and I hate myself. I miss him all the time.” 

Cautiously, Ellie stepped toward the girl and held out her arms for Fred. Instead, Chloe shocked them and stepped into her arms. Ellie recovered quickly, wrapping her arms around the girl and trapping Fred between them.

“I’m so, so, so sorry,” Ellie whispered over and over again until her voice was lost in a sob or perhaps it was Chloe’s. Alec got up and walked away, leaving them to grieve in private. 

*

Alec returned sometime later to find Ellie alone on the bench with her head in her hands. Fred tripped over to her and offered her something that might’ve been a dandelion if he hadn’t mashed it in his fist. 

“Is this for me?” she mock gasped and accepted the gift. Fred nodded and Ellie thanked him and kissed his cheek. Laughing, Fred wriggled free from her and went exploring again. Ellie twirled the flower between her palms, her eyes far away. 

“She forgave me,” she said aloud. “I can’t even forgive myself and she forgave me.”

Alec sat down on the bench beside her and together they watched Fred. 

“Maybe it’s time you tried,” he suggested quietly. 

“You never did,” Ellie reminded him.

“No one ever forgave me,” he admitted and scratched at that old invisible scar on his left ring finger. Ellie muttered something beside him, and then suddenly she was whacking him with that dandelion or whatever it was that Fred had given her. It disintegrated rapidly, falling apart piece by piece until Ellie stopped and dropped the rest into a pile of discarded dandelion parts by her feet. 

“Are you done?” he asked her and arched an eyebrow. 

“I think so,” Ellie exhaled and rubbed her hands over her thighs. “Now, I can forgive you, but if you ever leave me with Geoffrey and wander off with my son –“

Alec started laughing at her.

“It’s not funny!” Ellie cried. “I was worried about you both.”

Alec decided now probably wasn’t the best time to tell her how Fred had taken apart an entire shelf in the cereal aisle when he brought him into the market for a bag of crisps, or how they’d both dozed off during a game of hide and seek and Fred wound up napping underneath a bench in the muddy grass.

“How’d the lunch with Geoffrey go?” he asked her instead. 

“It went well,” she admitted. “He was able to make a lot more sense of the finances than you or I. He thinks that as long as I get a full time job within two months, I’ll be able to afford one of the houses we looked at the other day.” 

“Oh, God, Richardson,” Alec groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “Tell me it wasn’t the yellow one or the one with the water stains and the mice.” 

“The yellow one wasn’t _that_ bad,” Ellie protested. “The only reason why you didn’t like it was because you didn’t know how to flirt with the realtor.” 

“If I’d known you’d never forgive me for that, Richardson, I would’ve told her we were married,” Alec quipped. Ellie elbowed him but she couldn’t contain her grin. Alec hid his own grin behind a hand. Fred came barreling across the grass with a whole fistful of flowers in hand. He passed them to Alec and dashed off again. 

“I’ve been replaced,” Ellie teased him with an exaggerated sigh. She leant forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hand. Alec nudged her with his shoulder and passed her the flowers.

“Oh, Alec, you shouldn’t have,” she cooed mockingly. “They’re beautiful!” she gushed and buried her nose so deep in them that she sneezed. Alec sniggered and she hit him with the bouquet. It was only then as he flicked purple petals off of his shoulder at her that they both realized that the flowers weren’t dandelions, and although they thought they were hideous, they certainly weren’t weeds. 

“Miller, where’s your son?” 

They both stood up and Fred reemerged from the hedge that lined the edge of the grassy lot that adjoined the parking lot. He had another bouquet of flowers in hand, freshly picked from the garden of the unlucky soul that lived on the other side of the hedge next to the market. 

“Here, go put them back,” Ellie ordered and handed him the flowers he’d just given her along with the second batch that Fred had just proudly offered her. 

“ _Me_? Miller, he’s _your_ son,” Alec pointed out. 

“Alec, you let my son take a nap in a mud puddle. Put them back.” Alec flinched as she threw the last of the flowers at him. 

“What am I supposed to do with them? He’s already pulled them out of the ground,” Alec complained.

“I don’t know.” Ellie shrugged and scooped the little devil up. “Just kind of arrange them in the dirt or something.” 

Alec rolled his eyes and cut through the hedge with some difficulty when he finally found a spot that was large enough for him to squeeze through. It wasn’t hard to figure out where the flowers had come from. One half of the poor schmuck’s garden was dug up. Christ, there was a reason why he hated plants. Alec stuck the first flower into the ground but it flopped over. _Fuck it_. He scattered the rest of the flowers and kicked around some of the dirt, hoping it looked convincing enough to be blamed on a neighbor’s dog or a rabbit or some sort of natural disaster. He did feel bad, but Fred was only a toddler, how was he supposed to know? When he came round the other side, Ellie was trying to explain to Fred what he had done wrong with little success. 

“Did you fix it?” she asked him.

“Sort of,” Alec hedged and scratched at the back of his neck. Miller told him she wanted to pick something up from the Market before she left to get Tom from school. Alec coughed and tapped her on the shoulder.

“What?” she whipped around to face him. Alec cringed and motioned to her son.

“I didn’t want to tell you this but wee Fred’s been banned from the Market.” 

*

By the time Alec had finished explaining what happened in the cereal aisle, Ellie was struggling not to laugh. 

“I’m never leaving you alone with Fred again,” she told him, and then she promptly handed Fred off to him to make a quick run through the Market. “Don’t go away, I mean it this time,” she warned him. Alec rolled his eyes again, but she knew when she came back he’d be there. 

She lost it when she got to the cereal aisle. The mess had been cleaned up but there were some Cheerios lining the bottom shelf, and a disgruntled worker stacking shelves glared at her as she passed him, giggling. 

She knew Alec would _try_ to listen to her, but her unpredictable two year old was a whole different story. Hastily, she got the few items she’d come in for, rushed through the check out, and hurried out to meet them. Alec was still there, standing in the sunlight with her son in hand. 

“Thank God, you’re back.” He sounded so relieved that Ellie could only imagine what Fred had attempted during the fifteen minutes she’d been gone. He traded her capricious child for the bags and walked them back to the car. Ellie put Fred into the car seat and buckled him in while Alec loaded the groceries into the passenger seat. He shut the door and turned to her. 

“Thanks for taking Fred,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. 

“I forgot how much I _don’t_ miss that age,” Alec chuckled and leaned his hip against the side of the car. 

His clothes were streaked with dirt, his knees had grass stains, he had leaves from the hedge stuck to his coat, and a flower petal in his hair. She was used to him unshaven, hair sticking up, clothes wrinkled from sleeping in them; but today Alec Hardy was an entirely new disheveled mess, and it had a such a sudden and strange effect on Ellie that she knew no matter how many dates she went on with the clean-cut, friendly, and funny Geoffrey, she wouldn’t be able to replicate it. 

“What?” Alec barked at her, his eyebrows drawing together. 

Ellie grinned and pointed to his hair. He looked up at the sky, scowled, and stepped away from the car and closer to her.

“ _What_?” 

Shaking her head, Ellie uncrossed her arms and reached for the petal in his hair. She caught it between her fingers and showed it to him. Alec blinked at the crushed purple petal and then slid his hand into his coat. He pulled out a pink flower that was slightly smooshed and a lot prettier than any of the other flowers her son had ripped up. 

“Tell me you didn’t steal that,” Ellie groaned and pressed her palm to her forehead.

“I might’ve stepped on it when I was destroying the garden.” He tugged at his earlobe and then held it out toward her. “Hopefully, they’ll think it was an animal.” 

“You’re a horrible influence on my son,” Ellie teased him and swatted his arm. Alec didn’t laugh or smile, not even when she took it from him and thanked him with a smile of her own. “I was kidding,” she reassured him and rubbed his arm.

“I think you’re son’s a bad influence on me,” he observed, picking a leaf off his shoulder. 

“A good influence,” Ellie argued and stepped up to brush the leaves from the front of his coat. “He’s half mine,” she reminded him.

“I think he’s half Satan too,” Alec snorted. Ellie paused, her hand on his chest and the flower slipped from her opposite hand. 

“Shit.” Alec thrust a hand into his hair. “Ellie, I didn’t mean it like that –“ 

“I know,” Ellie said and forced a smile. “It’s okay,” she told him and it would be one day, one day soon. 

Alec clumsily dropped an arm around her shoulders, and then after a moment, he snaked his other arm around her middle. Ellie shut her eyes and tried not to compare it to the last time he’d held her like this two weeks ago in a dark kitchen on her birthday. They were in the middle of a noisy parking lot, the sun beat against her back, and Alec smelt strongly of dirt and freshly mowed grass, but it still felt like she was floating in the dark and that he was the only solid thing remaining in the world. 

“I meant what I said earlier, Ellie,” Alec said, cupping the back of her head. “You’re a good Mum, and I don’t care what other people say that boy is one hundred percent yours, and he’s going to be fine. Both of them are going to turn out just fine.” 

Ellie nodded against his chest and willed herself to believe it. 

“You’re going to be fine,” he whispered and knotted his fingers in her hair. They were _all_ going to be fine, just fine. She repeated it over and over in her head until it became like a prayer. 

Alec pulled back and studied her for a long moment. Then he smoothed her hair back from her forehead and cupped her opposite cheek. His hands felt coarse against her skin, almost chapped, from handling a lot more dirt and plants than he probably had since he was a little boy. Ellie could practically taste the earthiness that clung to his clothes and his hands as he leaned into her. She wanted to know what it would feel like to kiss a man that looked and felt so rough.

“Miller, you’ve got some dirt on your cheek,” Alec pointed out, jarring her out of her fantasy. Ellie jumped away from him and wiped at her cheek.

“Don’t even try to blame that on my son,” she snapped, blushing. 

“Sorry, Miller.” The bastard didn’t look repentant at all. “Tell Tom I said hello.” Shoving his filthy hands into his pockets, he carefully stepped around her and walked away. Halfway across the parking lot he turned and sent a smirk over his shoulder. 

“Have fun with Jeremy!”

Fucking prick. He had a whole conversation with Geoffrey and he still couldn’t get his name right. But she was grinning as she watched Alec stride across the parking lot and along the strip of shops until he slipped inside the café to wait for his car. They were going to be fine, she reminded herself, just fine. She got into the car and drove away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully I didn't make Alec or Ellie out to be bad parents, but my sister works in daycare and I'm constantly getting an earful about the little angelic looking devils that terrorize her day. And the flower story did actually happen, but unfortunately I wasn't as lucky as Fred when I was forced to put them back.


	14. Heatwave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The first part of this chapter is sort of an _interlude_. The Trigger warning occurs in the THIRD section of this chapter. If the trigger warning bothers/worries you, feel free to jump to the note at the end of the chapter.**
> 
>  
> 
> **TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of and Implied Past Pedophilia / I leave the rest up to you**

The heatwave started with an unseasonably hot afternoon in the beginning of May. Broadchurch residents would remember that weekend for the very memorable and very _illegal_ fireworks, and several scandalous incidents that occurred as a result of rising temperatures, sparks literally flying, and the Wilsons emptying their extensive liquor cabinet in anticipation of a retirement in the Virgin Islands that still hasn’t happened. 

Tom Miller remembers it for that mortifying moment when he got his first kiss from the Wilson’s granddaughter in front of everyone at the bonfire. Oliver Stephenson would rather not remember his mother trying to talk to a humiliated and horrified Tom about the kiss afterward, but his cousin’s face had been priceless. Nigel Carter doesn’t remember _anything_ about that weekend, and the Latimers actually burst out laughing when they tell him weeks later how he wound up on the roof. Paul Coates remembers stumbling upon something that would’ve been the talk of the town at one point, but he keeps walking and doesn’t tell anyone until later, much later, after they’re both gone. 

Ellie Richardson remembers it too but for very different reasons. It was the weekend she tried to pack part of her broken heart into a box; but there were too many memories, too many photographs, too many torn pages, too many scars, and then there was Alec Hardy.

She can still see him, standing on the threshold with her. The heat and his embarrassment had flushed his skin, making him look healthier and his eyes brighter. He’d peeled and shaved off so many layers of his armor that day that he seemed like a stranger to her. And yet, there had been no one in the world that she had trusted more than that broken man. When he opened that door, she dragged him in after her.

Sometimes, Ellie wants to burn that weekend out of her memory almost as much as her traumatized thirteen-year-old, although to be fair, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the way Alec Hardy kissed her, quite the contrary. 

And that’s the problem.

She thinks about that weekend with Alec Hardy and how it all started with him turning up on her doorstep on an insufferably hot day in May…

*

It was only the first weekend in May and Alec Hardy was already sick of the heat. As soon as the taxi pulled away, he stripped off his coat and slung it over his shoulder. It had been pleasantly mild when he left his hotel room that morning, but Vicky had chosen to meet at that stuffy snobby over-priced restaurant he took her to on their last anniversary. The price of a cup of tea had been enough to send his heart rate soaring. 

He hated her for making him go all the way up there just so she could tell him in person that Keira was getting a new Dad. _Step-father_ , he corrected himself as he loosened the blasted knot in the noose around his neck, but it didn’t help. Keira had sent him occasional one or two line texts in response to the daily barrage of texts, emails, phone calls, and voicemails Alec had left her. Ever since Ellie had called him a coward outside of the house he’d once told Keira they could make their home, Alec had been desperate to get a hold of his daughter. But perhaps this man that Vicky had been seeing for _years_ had stepped in to become more of a father to his daughter than he had ever been. Vicky had apologized and told him that he could’ve seen Keira, but she already had plans to stay with a friend that weekend. If Alec hadn’t been so upset by the bomb she just dropped, perhaps he would’ve told his ex-wife precisely why it was so important for him to see their daughter now. He knew she’d suspected something was seriously wrong for a while, but after he’d viciously lashed out at her one time and blamed it entirely on her, she’d stopped asking about his health altogether. 

Unfortunately, it was getting harder for Alec to ignore the fact that his heart was failing. He’d passed out last week in _public_ and it took everything in him to convince DI Worthington that he was fine and that a trip to A &E was unnecessary. Alec was taking his pills more often than he’d like to admit, for situations that wouldn’t have triggered him six months ago or even six weeks ago. His next request for a refill would require a visit to his doctor, something that he had been putting off for months. And Alec was afraid of what they were going to tell him. 

Panting, he slumped down on Ellie’s doorstep to rest. He blamed the sheen of sweat on his forehead on the heat and tried not to think of how short of a distance he’d walked from the main road. After collapsing last week, he’d been dodging Ellie’s phone calls, even though it would’ve been impossible for her to find out what had happened simply from the sound of his voice. But Ellie was persistent and last night he’d picked up and reluctantly agreed to come back to Broadchurch today. The whole ride to Sandbrook he’d considered making up some excuse to avoid her, but all it took was an hour with his ex for him to realize how much he needed to see Ellie again. 

He sneezed and noticed for the first time the blossoming shrubs and spreading hedges that were threatening to smother the small cottage behind him. Snapping off a particularly invasive branch, he idly began plucking the leaves off. Six weeks ago he’d sat shivering in that same exact spot and gazed out into the darkness. Now everything around him was so warm, loud and bright that it was hard to believe he was in the same place. Birds chirped, a dog barked, a tractor trundled along, and two girls about Tom’s age raced each other on bicycles. The girl in the lead was laughing and as she egged on her slower companion, Alec was reminded of two other girls forever frozen in a photograph that captured one of the last happy moments in their short lives. 

The Sandbrook casefile flashed through his mind; the two beautiful young girls, a flicker of the disastrous trial, the faces of the grieving upset families, and then his own estranged family as he walked away from them. He tossed the twig and shut his eyes. When he opened them again the girls were gone. 

“I’m losing it,” he mumbled and scratched at his chin. Flinching, he soothed the raw skin with a more careful touch of his fingers. It felt strange, like he was trying on an old suit that no longer fit. He barely recognized himself in the mirror but there was only so much that he could blame on a razor. 

“How long have you been out here?” 

“Not long.” He picked up his coat and scooted over so that Ellie wouldn’t hit him with the screen door. She closed the door and perched on the step below him. They sat in silence for a minute or two, baking in the sunlight. 

“How’d it go?” Ellie asked and picked up the branch by her feet that he’d neglected. 

“About as well as expected,” Alec sighed and dragged his hand down his face. 

“You didn’t get to see Keira?”

He shook his head and Ellie snapped the twig in half.

“What’d Vicky want then?” Ellie inquired. 

“She’s marrying the bastard she had an affair with. Apparently, she’s been shagging Aaron off and on for years,” Alec informed her wearily and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“God, I’m sorry, Alec.” Ellie flung the twigs into the shrubbery and shifted so that she was turned fully toward him. Touching his knee, she peered up into his face.

“Are you alright?” she asked him softly.

Alec shrugged and scrubbed his hands over his face again. “Keira’s finally getting a father.”

“ _Alec_ ,” Ellie said sharply and squeezed his knee. “You are her father. You will _always_ be her father.”

“Now, you sound like my ex when she’s looking for more money,” he snorted and lifted his head from his hands. Ellie didn’t find it funny. Her eyes widened and then narrowed to slits. 

“What happened?” she demanded. 

“I just told you what happened,” Alec groaned.

Ellie grasped his wrist. Tugging his hand away from his face, she studied him for a long time. 

“Miller, you’re staring,” Alec growled. Self-conscious, he traced his jaw again, missing the beard he’d worn like an extra layer of skin. Ellie stretched out her hand and immediately found his newest scar. Alec jerked back from her, scowling. 

“I nicked myself with the razor,” he lied, but his fingers betrayed him by unconsciously seeking out the other little white scar behind his ear. Ellie eyed him critically, but as she took in the rest of him, her expression softened. 

“It’s a bit weird,” she admitted, motioning to his face. “I always thought after seeing you before Sandbrook – I meant when you were in the papers and on the telly – not that I noticed -“ she stammered to a halt and he swore she blushed. “You look _different_ ,” she decided, nodding to herself. Over the next few minutes though, she kept stealing sidelong glances at him.

“What?” he finally barked. 

“You’re wearing a suit and tie again,” Ellie pointed out to him, smirking. 

“I didn’t have time to change.” He shrugged out of his suit jacket and was about to attack his tie again when Ellie did it for him. Vicky used to fumble and strangle him with the silk whenever she attempted the task, but Ellie was surprisingly gentle and efficient for someone whose husband had only worn ties for formal occasions.

“I had to teach Tom how to do this,” she explained, smiling ruefully as she undid the knot and slid the silk free from his collar. Alec let her do it and they both pretended she wasn’t thinking of the man who should have taught Tom. 

It pained him to think of all the things he would never teach his own daughter. After Keira crashed a bumper car, they used to joke about how much they dreaded teaching their daughter how to drive. He wondered if Auntie Iris would be the one that got stuck with the job or if Aaron would step up as her new father. 

“You know you didn’t have to come all the way down here,” Ellie told him, still fixated on his blue tie. 

“Yeah, I did,” Alec confessed and focused on folding his coat and suit jacket over his arm. Ellie added the tie to his collection and Alec asked her: “Are you sure about this?” 

“Moving?” 

Alec nodded, although he wasn’t quite sure what he was asking her. 

“I’m not sure about anything right now,” she told him honestly. She stood and paused to take in the view from her front stoop.

“I never thought I’d leave this place,” she marveled. “I never even considered leaving this place, not once in my whole life.” 

“Ellie, we don’t have to do this today,” Alec spoke up. He had sat back on his hands and he was gazing up at her. She was silhouetted against the landscape and that endless impossibly blue sky, and for the first time Alec could see the beauty of it all and felt the pull of it somewhere deep within him. Watching her, he imagined what it would be like if he agreed to stay, if he offered to sit with her on that narrow stoop with the bees buzzing in his ears, and the ugly little cottage at their backs, and the nosy neighbors constantly speculating about whether they were or weren’t sleeping together. He thought about chasing Fred through the Market, and watching football with Tom, and waking up next to Ellie, and kissing her in the kitchen; and he thought that maybe if she asked him right now, he might just be foolish enough to agree to stay out here with her for the rest of the afternoon, and the next, and the next one after that…

“Come on, Alec. Let’s get this over with before you take back your offer to help me pack up the house,” Ellie sighed. 

“I promised, didn’t I?” he reminded her.

“You were half asleep on the phone last night, you would’ve agreed to anything.” 

“I wasn’t asleep,” he protested.

“Alec, you called me _darlin_ ’,” she mimicked him.

“I didnae.” His Scottish accent was so thick that it drowned out his weak denial. Alec felt the blood flood his face and he brought his suit jacket and coat close to his chest. 

“Is that what you called your wife?” Ellie teased him, grinning. 

“No,” Alec admitted quietly, embarrassed because it was much closer to his heart. “That’s what I call my daughter.” Ellie was taken aback by this as if she understood what it meant to him.

He slowly stood and opened the screen door for her. Ellie hesitated, and then taking him by the arm, she dragged him in after her. 

*

At the end of the day, they hadn’t finished, but they’d made a significant dent in packing up her stuff. Ellie had suggested they split up and each take a room. Alec had chosen the kitchen because Ellie rarely cooked and he wouldn’t feel like he was digging through her life. God knew he’d already done too much of that without even trying. Sealing up the last of the cardboard boxes, he piled it along the wall with the rest of them and wiped his brow with his bare forearm. 

“Miller?” 

Checking his watch, he wondered how he missed the shadows creeping into the room or the silence that had seeped in to fill the void of Miller’s radio. He stretched his arms above his head and massaged the back of his neck. His body was aching and tomorrow he was going to regret volunteering, but this seemed to be one of the few physical activities that hadn’t sparked a reaction from the defective organ housed within his chest. 

“ _Miller_?”

Groaning, he pushed off from the counter and searched the house. She’d been in the sitting room earlier, but she’d shouted something to him about the bedroom, and he was grateful her questionable taste in music had followed her upstairs. 

“ _Millllerrrr_!” 

He climbed the stairs and threw the bedroom door wide open. Ellie shot to her feet and the heavy book in her hand hit the floor with a bang. Her hair was in disarray and her jumper was on the bed, along with an open shoebox, a couple of paperbacks, and many photographs. Some of the photographs had been violently ripped up. The carpet was strewn with the debris and pages that had been torn from the books. An empty cardboard box rested next to the hope chest still waiting to be filled. 

“Don’t you knock?” Ellie snarled and wiped at her nose. 

“Sorry, the door was open and you weren’t answering,” he floundered and stumbled back a step. Something crackled beneath his foot and he found the radio in pieces. Ellie must’ve hurled it at the door. That explained the silence. 

“What do you want?” she snapped and crossed her arms over her thin tank top. He wanted to know if she was okay, but clearly she wasn’t. 

Shivering, she hugged herself tight against a chill that he couldn’t feel. His instincts screamed at him to get out and leave her alone so she could pull herself together. He wasn’t the most perceptive person but he could sense that something private, something sacred to her had been opened with that hallowed yellowing shoebox. Her face was blotchy and puffy, but her eyes were dry, and as he moved toward her they burned into his. 

She was vibrating with that suppressed rage simmering beneath her flushed skin. Alec could feel the heat radiating off of her, even though he was careful not to touch her. And yet she was still shivering. He took a cautious step in the direction of the bed and painstakingly retrieved the jumper she’d had on earlier from the messy remains of a life lost. 

One of numerous photographs came with the jumper, clinging to the material. Passing her the jumper, he examined the snapshot. Alec had been so desperate to cement Ellie’s innocence that he’d gone through the Miller’s former home with SOCO and by himself at least four times. After the last search, he’d thought he’d seen all of the Miller’s family photographs but he’d never seen this one. Ellie was in a beach chair with Fred in her lap, and Tom was kneeling in the sand on one side of her and Joe was on the other. They all had on ridiculous neon cheap shades and there were palm trees in the background. 

“Where was this taken?” he asked softly. 

“Florida a few weeks before…” Ellie’s voice cracked and she clamped her mouth shut. 

Alec nodded and touched Ellie’s face in the photograph. Her sunglasses were pushed back from her forehead to control her unruly curls and she was squinting up at the photographer, her smile as blindingly bright as the sun reflected in her eyes and the rare color in her face. She was beautiful. What kind of man could toss a woman like that aside? What did that bloody bastard need so badly that he was willing to sacrifice a wife and two sons that any man would’ve been proud of? 

“I wish I could give this back to you,” he said to her, indicating the photograph in his hands. “But I can’t. No one can do that. We can’t go back and change the past. You have to learn to let the past go.”

He replaced the photograph on the bed, his eyes lingering on their genuine smiles, even Joe’s. Turning, he discovered Ellie frozen with the sweater still clutched in her hand and her eyes locked on the same photograph. He risked touching her, lifting his hands to her bare arms. Her skin was cooler and her face was more haunted than enraged. 

“Ellie, if I wasn’t so certain, if I had any shadow of a doubt, or if I thought that there was even the _slightest_ chance that I could’ve been wrong…”

“It was Joe.” 

It sounded odd coming out of her mouth after all this time. He’d broken her with those three words, and although he knew that Ellie had accepted it as true as soon as she saw Joe and had not doubted Joe’s guilt in all the months that followed, the way she said it now turned his blood to ice. She took a deep shuddering breath and stepped out from under his hands.

“There’s something you need to see,” she told him and stooped to pick up the book from the floor. Straightening up, she offered it to him. It was a hardcover titled “The Color of Fire”, and judging by the flaming heart on the cover it was a trashy romance novel. Alec remembered coming across a small stash of books during SOCO’s second run through, but most of the books had been Tom’s textbooks or children’s books for Fred. 

“How strong is your heart?” she asked him, dead serious.

“Miller, I’m not a prude,” he retorted and yanked the book out of her hand. Ellie buried her head in her hands, mumbling something about him keeling over. He started paging through the book, skimming what was definitely poorly written erotica. “ _Boom, boom, thunder and lightning flashed before his baby blues and I found magic in his_ -.” He broke off reading out loud, unable to get through one more line of that utter shite. She was scaring him. “Ellie, what the hell is this? Some kind of sick joke?”

“No! God, I wish it were,” Ellie moaned, shaking her head and pointing to the book. “Look inside the –“

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swore and slammed the book shut. He was lucky Ellie had warned him. Swallowing hard, he opened it again and forced himself to look at the photograph jammed between the last pages of the book. 

“Is that - ?” he asked at last. 

“I think so,” Ellie whimpered. Sniffling, she scraped her hands down her face and glanced around. “There were – there were more but they weren’t –“

“More?” Alec gaped at her. 

Ellie went to the nightstand and grabbed a small stack of photographs that Alec had missed earlier. She looked at the first one and then gave them to him. Alec had to put the book down so that he could sort through them. He understood what Ellie was trying to tell him. There were only five of them and the only thing that set them apart from the family photographs on the bed was that Danny was in every single one of them. Joe had cut people out of some of them, and there was only one where he had his arm around Danny, but they were younger and Tom was half in it as well. Ellie had shut the only incriminating photograph in the book and left it there. 

“Did you know about this?” he asked her. This was evidence they both knew he had to ask. 

“Of course not!” she snapped and pressed a hand to her forehead. “Packing up the old house was a blur but it must’ve been in that box of junk I found in the back of the bedroom closet. I thought I chucked it, but some of the stuff ended up shoved into other boxes.” Sighing, she collapsed at the foot of the bed in the midst of the twisted family collage. She slumped forward with her elbows on her thighs and held her head between her hands. 

“Alec, I swear I never saw those photos until today. All I want to do is burn them or bury them so deep that no one will ever find them. I want them out of my house and I don’t want Tom, or Fred, or god forbid the Latimers – “

They both cringed and Alec snatched the book up and stuffed the rest of the photographs inside so they didn’t have to look at them. He wanted to chuck the bloody book into the ocean but even the Atlantic Ocean wasn’t wide or deep enough to hide something like that. All secrets surfaced eventually, and Alec knew that this one had surfaced for a reason. 

“Don’t show the Latimers,” Ellie pleaded. 

“I won’t,” Alec promised. There was only one person that had to see this, and although the idea sickened Alec, he knew that it was necessary to ensure that Danny and all those that loved him rested in peace. After that he would bury the book under six feet of evidence in the bowels of the Broadchurch Police Department, and hopefully it would rot in hell along with Joe Miller. 

Ellie tried to stand up but her knees gave out and she wound up sliding to the floor. 

“Ellie!” He threw the book on the bed and sank to his knees in front of her. 

“’m okay,” she insisted and waved him off. Propping herself up, she sat with her back to the bed. “I’m okay,” she repeated. Her hands trembled as she pulled her knees to her chest. “I’ll be okay,” she corrected herself, her voice wavering. She lowered her forehead to her knees and Alec crawled over to sit beside her. 

“I want to let it go and forgive and forget, but then I find something like _that_ –“ Her voice broke and she raised watering eyes to his. “How could he? How could he do that to Danny? Why is Joe _still_ torturing us?” she hissed and all of that pent up rage tumbled out of her in a rush of words as the dam finally broke.

“It’s been months and all I want to do is move on and that fucking bastard is always there. He’s everywhere. I can’t go to the bloody Market without seeing someone that resembles him and I can’t look out the damn window without thinking about him. I try to pack and he’s in all of the boxes, I try to sleep and he’s in my dreams. I can’t even look at my own sons without seeing him and I can never stop -” She tripped over the last word and curled in on herself. Sucking in a breath, she hugged her knees to her chest so tightly that Alec knew she felt like she was about to fly apart. “I want it to stop. I want it to end. I want -” 

“I know,” Alec whispered and lightly touched the top of her head. Her hair was soft and her curls sprung up in the wake of his fingers as he passed his hand through them over and over again. He tried to solely focus on Ellie instead of that fucking monster she’d been married to for fourteen years but his hand was shaking. 

“I wish he were dead. I wish I never met him. I wish –“

A single sob escaped her, her whole body heaving with the effort of reigning in the rest. She wrenched herself free from him and flung herself at the bed with a vengeance. The paperbacks hit the bureau and the shoe box struck the bathroom door. Photographs spilt and flew everywhere as she ripped the duvet from the bed. Alec flinched as the alarm clock hit the wall. Ignoring the dizziness, he heaved himself up from the floor and stowed that ugly hardcover book safely out of the storm’s path. 

“ _Unbelievable_!” Ellie exclaimed incredulously and picked up the indestructible alarm clock. There wasn’t even a scratch on it. “What is this bloody thing made of? Titanium?” She turned it over between her hands and went to smash it against the bureau but Alec stopped her. 

“Drop it, Miller.”

Ellie stilled at the sound of his voice. Alec stepped up behind her and clasped her shoulders. The room tilted and Alec shut his eyes. He pressed closer to her to remain upright and the world narrowed to the sound of their breathing and the blood roaring in their ears. 

“Drop it,” he repeated himself, his hands slipping and sliding down her bare arms. He lowered his head to hers and his fingers circled and pressed into the veins at her wrists. Her pulse steadied his and he whispered her name against the shell of her ear. 

“Ellie, it’s not worth it. _He_ ’s not worth it,” he breathed. 

The alarm clock dropped from her slackened fingers with a clunk. Alec sighed and unconsciously kissed the back of her head. Running his hands up her arms, he rested his temple against hers. She leaned into him and he tried to brace himself against the bureau. 

“It’s okay,” he told her soothingly, but it wasn’t. A shitty platitude wasn’t going to fix anything and a lousy piece of furniture wasn’t strong enough to support the burdens they carried. Alec caught her against his chest and the pain was almost unbearable. 

“It’s okay.”

Their descent was slow but inevitable. Somehow, they always wound up dragging each other down.

*

He lost track of time as the shadows lengthened around them and the color bled out of the room. Eventually, the knob digging into his spine became too bothersome and he was forced to move. Ellie reluctantly picked her head up off his chest and sat up beside him.

“Sorry,” she whispered, rubbing at her eyes. “I didn’t mean to –“ She shook her head and drew her knees to her chest. “I thought I would be okay but _that_ -” She faltered again and the photograph weighed heavily on their minds. 

Alec scratched at his ring finger. He never thought he’d consider himself fortunate, but he did. Vicky had destroyed his life, but it all paled in comparison to what Joe Miller had done to his family and to Danny. He rolled up his sleeve and searched the inside of his forearm until he found it. After two and half years it was impossible to notice, but Alec could still feel it on the surface of his skin.

“I burned myself the first week I moved out,” he said, outlining the small shiny scar. “There was a storm and we lost power in the hotel. I was so obsessed with Sandbrook, so intent on reversing all the damage Vicky had done and solving that case that I raided the supply closet for matches and candles and worked through the night.”

He leaned toward her and held out his forearm between them. Ellie scooted closer to examine his arm, but by now it was too dark to see it. She touched the inside of his arm and her fingers left a pleasant trail of sparks in their gentle exploration. After a few moments, her thumb returned to the scar and traced over it. 

“Did you burn the place down?” 

“Nearly,” Alec admitted and Ellie snorted. “I was lucky the woman in the room next to mine was a nosy old bat and already had it in for me. After three days of not sleeping, I crashed so hard that I slept through most of the banging and the hot wax pooling around me as the candles burned down. It wasn’t until the concierge threatened to break in that I woke up just in time to put them out. If it had been a minute or two later…” He trailed off and Ellie squeezed his arm. They both knew how quickly a fire could start. Alec covered her hand before she could pull away. 

“I let Sandbrook consume me. I was so single-mindedly focused on that damn case that I didn’t realize until after I lost it what I’d given up.” He lifted his eyes to hers. 

“Alec, you haven’t lost anything. There’s still time -“ 

“Ellie, I lost two and half years with my daughter. Even if she can forgive me, those are two and half years I’ll never be able to get back.” He let his words sink in and leaned in closer so that they were eye to eye. “Ellie, you can’t let this consume you. You’ve got two things that I didn’t have –“

“What’s that?” she interrupted him bitterly, “A fire extinguisher and some common sense?” 

“No, Fred and Tom.”

He caressed the back of her hand. There was an indent where her wedding ring had been, but in time that would fade too. Releasing her hand, he gently pushed back the curls from her forehead. Her eyes gleamed in the gloaming and Alec recalled that blindingly bright light reflected in them from that last happy hour in Florida. 

“Ellie, listen to me,” he pleaded. “Don’t waste any more of your time with them thinking about _him_.”

“Alec,” Ellie sighed wearily.

“Ellie, _please_ , try to remember that,” he was begging her. “Trust me. You’ll regret every second you lose.” Out of all the shitty platitudes, this was the one piece of advice he needed her to hear. 

Ellie heard it and more importantly she heard everything that he hadn’t said. There was a steadiness in her gaze that hadn’t been there before. Alec went to kiss her forehead and she tightened her grip on his arm. 

“How long have you been here?” she wondered softly, her eyes searching his. 

“I don’t know a couple of hours.”

“No, I mean, how long have you been _here_?” she clarified. She gestured to the room around her, to the little space that remained between them, to his arm that she held onto. 

Alec didn’t really understand what she was getting at, but he knew that he met her in the heart of summer, that he shattered her at the first signs of autumn, that the sentencing and their separation happened in the middle of a November rainstorm, and that he’d brought another storm with him on his heels when he forced himself into her house in the winter. He remembered snow in her hair outside of a coffee shop and the first time he saw her dressed up with Geoffrey. He remembered sitting at the kitchen table with Fred and Tom and the sound of their laughter when Fred threw a lump of cheesy pasta at Alec. He remembered following her out onto those blasted cliffs and giving her stolen flowers in the sunny parking lot. Everything had changed so fast as spring snuck in and brought with it a hope that Alec hadn’t dared to feel in years. A bed had been shared, confessions had been made, barriers had melted, and walls had come down. They’d known each other for less than three hundred and sixty-five days, and spent more than half that time apart or bickering, and yet…

“I’ve been here the whole time,” he realized. He held her hair back and mapped out her face. No, she wasn’t the same blissfully naive woman that he’d met on the beach or the same broken woman that had curled into his side on that bench. She’d changed and grown, and he’d been there the whole time and barely registered the transformation. She was someone different, someone tougher, someone that despite meltdowns, and torn up photographs and a tragic case that would never stay closed, would be alright very soon. Perhaps, she’d never be as happy as she once was, but she wouldn’t need Geoffrey, or Alec, or anyone else as long as she had those two boys. Alec could walk out of that house and know for certain that Ellie was going to be fine, but something held him back. 

“Thanks,” she said, drawing circles around his scar. 

“For what?” Alec asked.

“For being here.”

Bending her head, she tenderly brushed her lips over the scar on his arm. And for the first time in years, Alec felt it burn. 

The heat spread up his arm and through him. From the day they met, Ellie had been an irritatingly warm presence but he never quite understood how _warm_ or how many of his layers she could blaze through with a mere touch of her mouth. She moved to kiss his wrist and Alec swore she kissed the very vein that carried the blood back to his heart. 

“Miller,” he all but growled at her. Ellie paused, but instead of heeding his warning, her fingers stroked the inside of his arm and her lips ghosted over his skin until they landed on that stupid burn mark again. His hand was already in her hair, and his fingers twined in her curls, bringing her closer even as half his instincts screamed at him to push her away. The other half of him relished the heat that licked at his insides and warmed a part of his heart that he thought didn’t exist anymore. Closing his eyes, he dropped a kiss to her hair and nuzzled his head against hers. 

“Ellie,” he breathed her name and kissed her jaw. She shivered and he felt the vibration in his limbs. Shifting closer, his hand uncurled from her hair and settled on her bare shoulder to turn her fully toward him. Ellie let go of his arm and he lifted his palm to her face.

The vibration went through him again, but this time he was aware that it was coming from outside of himself. It was behind him, somewhere beneath the dresser. 

“ _Alec_.”

“Ignore it,” he told her gruffly. 

“I can’t,” Ellie sighed against his mouth. “It could be Tom or Lucy.” 

Of course, his phone was downstairs and who would be calling him anyway? Feeling like a complete moron, Alec released her and sat back so suddenly that his head banged into another one of the knobs on the dresser. 

“Are you -?”

“Fine!” Alec hissed and rubbed the back of his head. She rested a hand on his shoulder and leaned across him but Alec was closer. 

“I’ve got it.” He stretched out and slid his hand beneath the bureau. Her phone stopped vibrating the moment he touched it. He dragged it out and swiped the dust from the screen, revealing the missed call. 

“Your boyfriend,” he spat and slapped the mobile into her open hand. Ellie flushed and scrolled through the missed texts. Alec started to get up and Ellie’s fingers slid into his hair. 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she told him, half focused on texting not-her-boyfriend Geoffrey. Her fingers gently kneaded his scalp. In spite of everything, Alec’s eyelids drooped. It wasn’t until his head lolled and almost hit the same bloody knob that he belatedly caught up with her motive. 

“Stop that!” He shook her off and accidentally knocked the phone from her hand. Ellie’s eyes went wide. Alec inhaled deeply and struggled to regain a sense of equilibrium that he’d been lacking since Ellie handed him that damn book. He rubbed his hands down his clean-shaven face but the strangeness of the sensation after all this time didn’t bring him any comfort. 

“I should go.” He cleared his throat and tipped his head toward the now silent presence between them. “You should call him back.” 

The screen lit up with another text and Ellie picked the phone up to prevent him from reading it. She unlocked the screen and her blank face was lit by the eerie glow. Weighing the phone in her palm, she locked the screen without answering and extinguished the light.

“I’ll drive you.” 

Ellie had made that hesitant offer a few times but Alec had refused to let her cross into his territory. His residence changed frequently and it was always far enough to be an inconvenience to her, but his current location was closer than he would’ve liked to admit. 

“Miller -” he tried to protest but Ellie’s mind was already made up. 

“It’s the least I can do after you helped me pack up the house,” she pointed out. 

“It’s not done,” Alec reminded her. They were already in the midst of a mess and Ellie was threatening to make it worse. After what just happened, how could she not see that this was a bad idea?

“Well, then, I guess you’ll have to come back and help me pack up the rest,” Ellie replied briskly. Alec struggled to make out her face but Ellie was already on her feet with her back to him. He slowly got up and joined her at the foot of the bed in the center of all that turmoil. It was so dark now that Alec could barely make out anything more than rough shapes, but neither of them went for the light. It was better that way. 

“We’re not going to finish this tonight and I need a break.”

“Lucy’s got the kids ‘til tomorrow?” Alec asked and stepped closer to her. 

“The day after tomorrow,” Ellie corrected him, surprising him. “I didn’t know how long it was going to take or if you were serious about helping, but I knew that I didn’t want Fred or Tom with me when I went through everything. I packed up the old house in a rush and I had a bad feeling that I’d find something…” She didn’t have to say anymore, she found it. Alec touched the back of her shirt and Ellie leaned into him. The darkness swelled around them, swallowing the little broken shards of a picture perfect family shattered with three words. As much as he wanted to get out of that suffocating room, he knew that they couldn’t leave it in that state. 

“Are you hungry?” he asked. 

“There’s nothing in the fridge,” Ellie informed him. Alec removed his hand from her back and put his hands on his hips. He stared at his feet even though Ellie could barely see him. 

“I heard about a place near the hotel that allegedly serves edible, possibly even decent food. If you want to drive me back we could stop there…” He held his breath and waited. 

“You’re buying,” she decided. He sighed in relief and pretended to look at his watch. 

“Fine. Go shower and change, Miller. I’m not taking you out looking like _that_.” He waved vaguely in the direction of her attire, although he honestly couldn’t remember what she was wearing, except for the fact that her lumpy jumper was buried somewhere in the wreckage and the thin tank top she was wearing underneath showed a little more skin than he could handle at the moment. 

“You’re joking, right?” Ellie snorted. “It took you two and a half years to find a razor and I just ruined your only shirt and you expect _me_ to dress up?“ 

“We’ll stop at my place then and I’ll prove to you that I have more than one shirt,” he grouched at her. Grabbing her arm, he spun her around and steered her toward the adjoining bathroom. Ellie grudgingly went grumbling, but she poked her head out before he even managed to flick the light on. 

“Alec, you have to leave my bedroom if I’m showering and changing.”

Alec kept his back to her and brought the book to his chest so she wouldn’t have to see it again. 

“I dropped my phone in here,” he lied. “It’ll take me five minutes to find it. Don’t come out or yell before you do.” 

She called him a wanker under her breath and deliberately locked the door. Alec waited until he heard the sound of running water before he switched the light on. He took a moment to survey the damage she’d left in her wake and then he started picking up the pieces. 

By the time Ellie got out of the shower, Alec was already downstairs and had hid the book in a paper bag beneath his coat. Everything else had either been trashed or had been neatly packed back into the shoe box and placed in the waiting cardboard box. It wasn’t until later, much later that Ellie discovered one of the photographs she’d ripped in half had been missing for quite some time. But by then, it hardly mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **“The Color of Fire” is NOT an actual book, and although my writing’s mediocre at best, I credit the title and that one shitty line Alec read to a writing contest that ended with disastrous but hilarious results. As for the photograph inside the book, you can interpret it however you want, but the only thing you’re actually SEEING is Alec and Ellie’s reactions. It could be anything, perhaps even something as mild as a school picture, it’s more the fact that Joe had it and he hid it knowing he shouldn’t have had it that set Ellie and Alec off. I’m deliberately leaving it open. What Joe’s character did in S2 definitely influenced this chapter. It’s hard because I liked Joe in S1, and even though I hated him after finding out he was the killer, it wasn’t until the S2 trailer and I watched S2 that I really HATED him. I needed to do something to make the switch so that Joe’s not the same Joe from S2 but he’s not the same Joe I had in mind when I started this story either. Hope that makes sense.**


	15. A Dark and Stormy Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again this is AU which means I’m making some shit up about Sandbrook and I have OCs in place of Tess, Dave, Daisy etc. I started daydreaming about this in September 2013 when there were A LOT of blanks and I apologize but I have no intention of changing it all now. Thank you Anna for being BRILLIANT and reminding me that no one can read my mind. And THANK YOU so much to those of you that left kudos or feedback!

The air was significantly cooler by the time they pulled up to Alec’s hotel. He told her to wait ten minutes and was in and out of his room before she finished saying goodnight to Tom, Fred, and Lucy. He made the mistake of getting in the car while she was still on the phone with Lucy and of course, her sister suddenly realized that Ellie wasn’t at home and she wasn’t alone. 

“Are you _finally_ going back to Geoffrey’s place tonight, El?” Lucy practically squealed, and it took all of Alec’s will power not to throw himself out of the moving vehicle. Ellie told her to shut it and hung up on her, but Alec had already heard too much. They drove right past the restaurant, and Alec had to tell her to turn around when he realized it several minutes of awkward silence later. 

“Sorry ‘bout Lucy,” Ellie apologized as she searched for a parking spot. The place was apparently popular and the lot was nearly full. 

“You didn’t correct her,” Alec blurted out, hating himself immediately. 

“Did you want me to tell her the truth?” she asked him and parked the car. Alec shook his head and got out. Knowing his luck, Lucy would’ve tracked them down with both kids and Oliver in tow to give Alec a piece of her mind. 

He was restless and Ellie was taking too long putting the keys in her purse. Moving around to her side of the car, he opened the door for her and stopped just short of physically dragging her out of her seat. Ellie stared at his proffered hand as if he’d grown an extra limb.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Miller, I was taught some manners,” he snapped. Ellie took his hand and allowed him to help her from the car. He slammed the door a little too hard behind her, but he kept his hand on the small of her back as they walked through the parking lot. 

“Where’d you learn that?” she teased him. “Did Vicky have to train you?” Miller spoke of him as if he were a dog. 

“No.”

“Your Mum?”

“No, she died when I was young,” Alec said. Ellie made a sympathetic sound and he went on, “My aunt, well, she’s not really my aunt, but my father was an idiot and she kind of stepped in and got stuck with the job of shaping me into someone that could at least pretend to be a human being.” 

Ellie smiled up at him and they slowed just shy of the door.

“She did a good job,” she complimented them both. Alec shrugged. 

“She tried her best, but I’ve never been easy to work with,” he teased, and they both recalled those early days when they worked together and Alec had made it blatantly clear that social niceties were not part of his skill set. It hadn’t been a full year but it felt like ages ago. 

They stopped under the awning and Ellie squinted up at him. The lamp was above him and shining directly into her eyes. Alec thought she almost looked like the happy woman from that last photograph taken in Florida. 

“You look nice, by the way,” he told her and allowed his eyes to sweep over her from head to toe. He only wanted to buy himself some time to clean the room for her, and he had honestly been shocked when she actually joined him in the kitchen wearing something a bit dressier than what she had worn for her first date with Geoffrey. Thank god the stove hadn’t been on this time. 

“Thanks, you clean up nice too.” Alec thought she might have been referring to the bedroom, but Ellie reached up to pat his cheek. “I still don’t believe that you own more than one shirt,” she joked, plucking at his coat. 

The door flew open behind her and Alec pulled her out of the way. A drunken couple stumbled past them. The woman had that same annoying uncontrollable giggle that Vicky had when she was hammered. 

“Twenty quid says they’re having an affair,” he bet her.

“Twenty quid says they’re not,” Ellie countered him. 

They stared after the couple, and Alec belatedly noted that he had his arms around Ellie’s waist and Ellie had a hand hooked into the front of his coat. She was watching the couple with a wistfulness that made him wonder if Joe had that same way of whispering slurred sweet nonsense in her ear and making her giggle, when they’d both had too much to drink, and were struggling to hold each other up in a world that kept spinning. The door swung open again, and Alec cupped the back of Ellie’s head so that she wouldn’t get hit with it. Another tipsy woman ran after the couple and handed them a forgotten purse, accompanied by a bawdy: “Remember no shagging ‘til after the wedding!” The drunken woman almost threw her purse back at the other woman, who laughed and ducked inside the restaurant. 

“You owe me twenty quid,” Ellie gloated as the couple happily resumed where they left off and stumbled off into the night together. 

Alec thought her wide grin might have been worth the loss of twenty quid. He pretended to sigh as he released her and held the door open, but he couldn’t quite shake the idea that being with Ellie was a lot like being pleasantly drunk. 

*

“This was nice,” Alec remarked as they cleared their plates.

“What do you mean? We’ve eaten plenty of times together,” Ellie reminded him and stole another sip from his untouched first glass of wine. 

“Well, yeah, but you’re usually not dressed like _that_ ,” Alec noted with a slight curve of his lips. He generally despised any type of restaurant like this, but tonight the soft lighting and the rich red wine was bringing out a side of Miller he’d never seen before. 

“It’s almost like we’re on a date,” Ellie mused and idly rubbed some lipstick from the rim of his wineglass. “When was the last time you went on a date?” she wondered. 

Alec felt the tips of his ears burn, but he shrugged and casually turned the tables back on her. 

“Where’s Gerome taking you this weekend?” 

“ _Geoffrey_ ’s not taking me anywhere this weekend,” Ellie informed him and took another swallow of his wine. “You’re stuck with me.” She beamed at him and it did something funny to his stomach.

“Don’t tell your sister that,” he warned her. “She’ll crucify me.”

“Don’t be daft. She doesn’t hate you _that_ much,” Ellie said and rolled her eyes at him. He shook his head at her. 

“Miller, she told me to stay the bloody hell away from you and your kids.” 

Alec’s fork clattered to his plate when he realized what he’d just told her. He reached across the table for his wine, even though he’d given up even the occasional glass due to the troubling increase in his symptoms. He wasn’t allowed more than a sip before Ellie took it back, nearly spilling the contents on his white shirt. It wouldn’t have helped anyway. 

“I knew it,” Ellie hissed and took another gulp to steady herself. “I knew there had to be some ridiculous reason –“

“She’s right,” Alec interrupted her. He took a deep breath and pushed his plate aside. “Ellie.”

Their eyes met across the table. And that was the moment when another inebriated member of the couple’s wedding party bumped into their table and caused Ellie to spill the glass of wine. Miraculously she managed to get it on everything but herself. The waitress had to clear the table, and the drunken imbecile kept apologizing and offering to buy her another drink, and Alec let him babble long enough for Ellie to forget their interrupted conversation. By the time they did get rid of him, Ellie had to use the restroom and Alec had asked for the check. 

Ellie left and Alec waited impatiently for the waitress to finish settling the rehearsal dinner party’s bill and run his credit card. 

“ _Alec_?”

Alec barely looked up from the check, expecting Ellie. Instead he found someone that he hadn’t seen in almost two and half years. He tried to recall if the side effects of any of his medications included hallucinations, because there was another ghost from his past in the restaurant with him and she seemed real. 

“Alec?” she whispered incredulously. 

Her face had a ghostly pallor and her grey eyes were round. But as she approached the table, Alec observed that despite the passage of so much time and her advanced age, she looked exactly the same as the day when he left her for the last time on the front porch of his home, holding his sobbing daughter. He only wished he could say the same about himself, but his unreliable heart was a constant reminder that the toll Sandbrook had taken on him had left more than just an emotional scar.

“Iris,” he greeted her and willed his stupid heart to behave. But it was hard seeing her after all this time, knowing what she thought of him after everything he’d done, and more importantly what he had _not_ done. 

“My God, Alec, you look –“

“Alec?”

_Shit_. Alec closed his eyes and Ellie settled her hand on his shoulder. Why did she always have such bad timing? He took a deep breath and Ellie’s touch helped to steady him. Opening his eyes, he found Iris staring at the two of them in abject horror. Ellie was fortunately more focused on him but she was astute, and he didn’t think that Iris’s reaction would go unnoticed. Reaching for Ellie’s hand, he turned and quietly told her to go wait for him in the car. 

“What?” 

“ _Please_ ,” he begged her. 

“I’m not -“ Ellie broke off when she saw the way that Iris was staring at him with her hand over her mouth. Hastily, he collected her purse and coat from the opposite chair and handed them to her. Ellie distractedly accepted them, glancing rapidly between Iris and him and puzzling over their relationship. “I’m just waiting for them to run my card then I’ll meet you at the car,” he told her softly. He squeezed her shoulder and nudged her in the direction of the door. Ellie left reluctantly, but after one last peek over her shoulder at them, something in Iris’s gaze spooked her enough to run for the door. 

“Is that _her_?”

Alec squeezed his eyes shut again and turned blinking to face his aunt. She was dressed as impeccably and smartly as ever with her iron grey hair plaited and pinned atop her head, but she was just as visibly shaken by his appearance as he was with hers. He had spent over two and a half years killing himself over that lie he’d forced her to believe. It had pained him almost as much as telling Keira, and he never would’ve managed it unless he hadn’t first successfully sold the story to this woman that had raised him to be a better man.

“Is that the woman you –“

“Leave her out of this,” Alec snapped. He tried to flag down the waitress but she was stopped by another one of her tables. At this point he was sorely tempted to walk out without paying. 

“Are you happy with her?” Iris asked and moved closer to the table. 

“What?” 

“Does she make you happy?” Iris inquired, studying him. “Was she worth giving up everything for one stupid -”

“Do you really think I was capable of that?” Alec interrupted her. Suddenly, he was tired of running, and tired of lying, and tired of everything that he’d tried so desperately to leave behind, but had wound up lodged inside his failing heart and the darkest corners of his mind. All he wanted was to see his daughter again, but he’d worked so damn hard to protect her and built the very walls himself brick by brick, lie by lie, person by person, that the only person he’d managed to shield her from was himself. He looked at Iris and he saw himself through her eyes. His past and present collided right there in the restaurant and Alec exploded. 

“Do you honestly believe that I could destroy those vows, my family, my entire career, the memory of those two girls, and that case just to get _shagged_?” 

The waitress of course chose this exact moment to finally reappear, and Alec threw his credit card at her with a dark look that told him she wasn’t getting paid if she didn’t run that thing as fast as humanly possible. 

“No.” 

Alec turned to Iris and she gave him a hard look. 

“Of course, I didn’t believe it, Alec. I’m not stupid. But I knew you had your reasons, so I went along with it because it was what _you_ wanted, darling. I thought you were a bloody idiot but I knew who you were protecting, and God, if I’d known…” she trailed off and wiped at her eyes. 

The waitress returned his card and scuttled off. Alec scribbled a signature, tucked his credit card back in his wallet, and retrieved his coat. He put his coat back on and stared at the grey-haired woman before him that had taught him nearly everything but had still left him unprepared for Sandbrook.

“I’m sorry, Iris, if there had been an easier way…”

They looked at each other and Sandbrook, and all of that unnecessary heartbreak, and lost time loomed over them. Iris wasn’t an overtly emotional woman and her displays of affection were rare, so when she took Alec’s face between her wrinkled hands and tipped it toward her tearful grey eyes, he already knew that she’d seen everything that he feared. 

“Oh, Alec, why didn’t you tell me that you were dying?” 

*

They walked out of the restaurant, and Iris kissed his cheek and made him promise to come see her soon. Her car was parked on the street and Alec watched her get in and drive off, before he remembered Ellie. He was lucky she was curious or she probably would’ve left without him. She was waiting for him outside the car with her arms crossed and her phone out. 

“What took you so long?” she demanded. “I texted you twice and they locked up because they’re closing. I was going to pull my old badge and threaten to break the door down if you didn’t come out in the next five minutes!” He had no doubt she would’ve done it. She was a force to be reckoned with even without the proof of her former credentials. 

“The waitress was slow,” he explained himself. He tried to get into the car but it was locked. Ellie put herself between him and the car. 

“Alec, who was that woman?” she asked sharply. He couldn’t handle this, not right now. 

“I’ll explain later. Let’s go.”

“Not until you tell me who she was.” Ellie was completely immune to the withering glare he gave her and stubbornly refused to budge. 

“She’s someone I used to know from – from Sandbrook,” he answered vaguely. 

“Oh, is that all she was to you?” she asked sarcastically. “Then why was she looking at me like I was a corpse that had just been exhumed from a cemetery?” 

“She wasn’t –“ Ellie’s eyebrows shot up, daring her to correct her. “I don’t know, Miller, maybe she recognized you from the papers or your husband’s trial –“ 

She paled. It was a low blow and he expected her to slap him for it. The fact that she didn’t made him want to slap himself. He was so sick of Sandbrook, and Broadchurch, and all the stupid aftershocks, and side effects, and ghosts that neither one of them would ever be able to exorcise. They would always be these two broken people and there was nothing that either one of them could do to change that. They could try and keep trying, but he couldn’t fix her and she couldn’t fix him. And yet here they were together again, struggling to keep each other upright while the world kept spinning out of control. 

Alec wasn’t sure if Ellie’s intoxicating presence made it better or worse, but he knew that right now he desperately needed to be in control. Iris was a reminder of everything; his past, his mistakes, his family, his estranged daughter, and his regrets. Her sudden reappearance after so many months had shaken him badly and thrown him off balance. Alec didn’t know how to stop the ground from sliding out from beneath his feet, just like he didn’t know how to stop himself from falling for the woman that was standing in front of him. She’d dragged him out onto that ledge and they were teetering on the edge of something that could only end badly. And for the first time Alec didn’t care. All those little lines he’d drawn for himself in the sand were washed away as the emotional tide swept in and over him. He stepped into her space and she let him. 

“Give me the keys,” he said. His voice was remarkably even. Her forehead crinkled and a frown marred her mouth. “I didn’t have anything to drink and you’ve had three glasses of wine.” 

“Two,” Ellie corrected him. 

“The keys, Miller.” He held out his hand to her and it didn’t shake. Ellie stared at the same open palm he’d offered her earlier with the same wariness. And then she handed over the keys. 

A part of him had been hoping that she would refuse, but something made her trust him in that moment. Alec’s hand closed over the keys, relishing the feel of the unique ridges and grooves biting into his palm. He wondered why they’d never discussed the reason why he never drove. It was strange how they could bare their souls to one another, and yet there were so much that they didn’t know about each other, so much that they’d _never_ know about each other. 

“You don’t want to walk?” 

“No, I’ll drive.”

He unlocked the car and opened the passenger door for her. Ellie hesitated. 

“If you crash my car I will kill you.”

“I won’t,” Alec vowed. 

Ellie grudgingly got into the car and he shut the door behind her. Then he went around and got into the driver’s seat for the first time in over a year and he drove. 

Driving a car again was easy. Concentrating on the road was not. He’d hoped that driving would help steel himself, and it did for a few minutes. He loved being behind the wheel and in control. During his divorce, his ex-wife had snidely commented that he’d miss his car more than her, and there were some days when Alec thought she might’ve been right. 

The hotel was less than five minutes away. When he drove past it, heading north instead of south, Ellie suspected that something was wrong. 

“Where are we going?” she asked nervously.

“Five minutes, Miller, just give me five more minutes,” Alec bargained with her. He didn’t want to stop the car, didn’t want to stop this rhythm, didn’t want to face the inevitable. 

Five minutes came and went, and Alec was so caught up in his thoughts about all the things that he’d been running from that he nearly missed a turn and Ellie screeched at him to pull over. Rolling his eyes, he pulled the car over to the side of the road, and it was only then that he discovered that his hands were shaking again. 

“Get out,” Ellie ordered him. 

Alec was already pushing the door open and climbing out. Ellie crossed around the front of the car. He went around the back and caught himself against the side of the car when her silhouette blurred. The warning sign of his debilitating condition was all it took to set him off. It had come on so fast, and so suddenly, and Alec was already upset. He stuffed the whole bloody pack of pills into his mouth and cut the inside of his cheek on the plastic. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Ellie hissed when she found him perched on the boot. Alec spat the plastic out onto the pavement and Ellie cursed him. “You could’ve killed us!” She smacked him then. 

“Are you going to finish me off this time?” he wheezed and clutched at the front of his coat. Ellie whipped out her phone and Alec grasped her wrist so hard that his fingers would leave bruises. The pain was so bad that he wondered if this was it. But then he was aware of himself shaking his head at her, and Ellie’s voice was in his ear, and her free hand had slipped inside his coat to rest over his heart. 

“Alec, you’re hurting me.”

“Sorry,” he gasped and let go of her wrist. She took her hand out from his coat and hung onto the edges of the car that they were sitting on. He wondered how much time it had taken the pills to kick in this time, but they were still doing their job and that was all that mattered. Unzipping his coat, he massaged his chest and breathed in the fresh air.

“Did you call an ambulance?” he asked her after a few minutes.

“No, but if you _ever_ do that to me again –“

“She’s my aunt,” he cut her off. Ellie’s jaw dropped.

“The woman in the restaurant was the same woman that raised you?”

“Yep.” Alec sat back on his hands and tilted his head to look at the sky above them. The night sky wasn’t so endless out here and there weren’t half as many stars. 

“I hadn’t seen Iris in so long that I thought I was hallucinating.” He shook his head, still in disbelief. 

“Trust me you weren’t, although she might’ve been on the same page. But why was she staring at _me_?” Ellie wondered. Alec’s ears burned and he briefly considered lying to her. 

“Oh, Iris assumed you were the um woman I was _allegedly_ with when my uh car got broken into and the evidence for the Sandbrook case was stolen.” He tugged at his earlobe and breathed in sharply through his nose. “Don’t worry I set the record straight on all counts,” he assured her. 

“Why would she think that?” Ellie asked, thoroughly confused. “That was well over a year before we even met –“ she paused in mid-sentence and her eyes widened. She whipped around to face him. “You lied to your own aunt about Sandbrook?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Alec groaned and sat forward. “I had no choice!” 

“You _lied_ to someone that was like a mother to you?”

“I lied to my own daughter!” he shouted to be heard over the engine of a passing lorry. The lorry’s brakes screeched as he narrowly made the same turn that Alec nearly missed, and then the red glow of the taillights faded along with the cough of the exhaust. Alec stared at the now empty road and blinked the last flare of red from his vision. 

“Miller, there was no one I wouldn’t have lied to if I thought they stood between me and what was best for my daughter.”

“And this was what you thought was best for her?” Ellie inquired softly. Her gaze, like his, was fixated on some distant point down the road. “Depriving her of her father?” 

Alec could see what was in front of him but his mind was deep within his past. 

“You have to understand,” he began slowly. “By the time Vicky stopped crying and I understood what she’d done and how it would affect the case, we had forty-five minutes.” That night was a blur but he remembered it in flashes. “I had forty-five minutes to decide what we were going to tell our CS, our colleagues, the press, those families, Iris, and our daughter in the weeks that followed. I made the decision in forty-two.” 

“Do you regret it?” Ellie asked in the wake of another passing car.

“What other choice did I have?” Alec asked and roughly rubbed at his eyes. Ellie laid a hand on his hunched back and he shuddered underneath the gentleness and warmth of her touch. “I should’ve been thinking of what was best for the victims and their families but all I could think of was my own.” He swallowed hard and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids as if he could physically push back those stark images of the grieving parents he’d failed.

“I kept thinking that I could still salvage the case and repair the damage, but by the time the trial hit, everything had already fallen apart.”

“Not everything,” Ellie soothed him. Alec shook his head, trying to shake those memories of the trial and the aftermath. 

“My CS knew the truth and made sure I was exonerated, but I didn’t deserve a pardon. That _mistake_ cost us the whole case and those families will never get closure.”

“There’s still time…“ Ellie started to reassure him as her hand moved to the nape of his neck. 

“It’s too late, Miller,” Alec confessed and his voice wavered. “I’m done.”

Ellie sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest. Alec remembered when they sat together on that bloody bench. He’d told her then that he was finished too, but he’d reached for her and everything had changed. Ellie was close enough to touch but Alec had never felt further away. She was finally moving forward while he was being dragged down by his past. Sandbrook had literally broken him in a way that no one would ever be able to fix. His medical records and his rapidly deteriorating health were evidence that he could no longer ignore. 

“I’m exhausted,” he told her, his voice raw. “I’ve been paying for that mistake for the past two and half years. I took the blame for something I didn’t do and denied myself from seeing my own daughter, and I tried so hard to get as far away from it all as I could…” He trailed off, his mind skipping through those dark and dreary months of numbness that had followed in the wake of the Sandbrook trial. 

“I thought that that would be enough, but then I wound up in Broadchurch with another child murder on my hands and _you_ …” He sighed and straightened up beside her. He still couldn’t decide if Ellie had staved off his inevitable decline or precipitated it. “It’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long.” 

Ellie touched his arm and he looked at her. 

“It’s all over Alec, you can stop running,” she told him. 

“Is it?” Alec wondered wearily. Ellie nodded and squeezed his arm.

“I think you’ve done your penance. Maybe it’s time for you to go home.”

The lights of a passing car lit up her face and sparkled in her eyes. And in that moment, Alec was struck by how beautiful she actually was. He wondered how she would react if he told her that in Keira’s painful silence she was the closest thing he had to a home. She must’ve seen something in his eyes.

“You still haven’t heard anything back from Keira?”

“No.”

And he didn’t think he ever would. 

“You have to go see her,” Ellie said. 

“Not tonight,” Alec replied. His heart lurched at the prospect of going to see Keira because despite how badly he wanted to see his daughter again, he had a sense of foreboding about that final meeting or the possibility that it might not ever happen.

The temperature had dropped hours ago, but Ellie’s fingers were warm as they covered his own. 

“Broadchurch was supposed to be my penance,” he said as their fingers interlaced. He kept his eyes on her hand, running his thumb over her skin that was deceptively soft when he knew now it was tougher than his own. “You know for a while I honestly thought I’d died and gone to hell…”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s not that bad,” Ellie argued. 

“Nah, not that bad,” Alec conceded. “ _You_ on the other hand…”

Ellie shoved him with her shoulder and Alec slid off the boot. Ellie laughed at him and attempted to brush some pollen from the back of his coat. 

“Like I said, _penance_ ,” he said accusingly and pointed a finger at her. “You’re always threatening to send me into cardiac arrest, and dragging me out onto cliffs, and asking me all these bloody questions; and you’ve got this annoying habit of getting under my skin.” Ellie rolled her eyes and called him a wanker but Alec was nowhere near finished. “I hate that hideous orange parka and that daft smile you have for everyone but me, and I hate how you’re so irritating that I can’t get you out of my head.”

Ellie tried to kick him and lost her sandal instead. Alec scooped it up and waved at her. 

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to be around you?” 

“Oh, you want to talk about being difficult?” Ellie shot back and snatched the sandal from him. “Who stole my job? Who was the Grumpiest Boss in Britain? Who tried to break into my house and then burn it down? Who had a fucking heart attack on me?” She hit him with her sandal to emphasize each of her points. “And who just tried to crash my car into a telephone pole?” 

“That’s not a telephone pole,” he corrected her automatically and added petulantly, “And I wasn’t anywhere near it.”

“You’re missing the point, Alec,” Ellie sighed. “This is about more than just the fact that you’re quite possibly the Worst Driver in Britain as well.” 

“I’m not a bad driver,” he defended himself. She snorted. 

“Alec, you blew the light, missed the turn, and pushed my speedometer into triple digits.”

“Miller, that’s impossible,” he scoffed. 

“People were honking at us! You can’t honestly expect that I wouldn’t notice them or that the car was rattling and the steering wheel was vibrating.” Her eyes widened when she realized that he hadn’t noticed. 

“I forgot you were in the car with me,” Alec admitted weakly and ran his hand through his hair. “I’m not good around people anymore,” he went on, digging himself deeper into that hole. His eyes flicked back toward hers and there was a mixture of fear and empathy there. “I’m so used to being alone that sometimes I forget that you’re there.”

“That’s no excuse –“

“It wouldn’t have mattered if _I_ died in a car crash,” he cut in furiously. 

“It matters to _me_!” Ellie said and struck him again with her sandal. Alec seized the stupid sandal before she beat him to death with it. 

“I’m sorry, alright?” he apologized gruffly.

“Just promise me it won’t happen again,” Ellie sighed. 

Alec nodded, at a loss for words, because he couldn’t promise her anything. He couldn’t promise her that his heart wouldn’t give out on him, and he couldn’t promise her that he wouldn’t do anything stupid when he was around her or god forbid her boys. Alec suddenly thought of Lucy and the row they’d had in the kitchen the morning after he kissed Ellie. He brought it up in the restaurant earlier but somehow the conversation had been cleared along with the table. Alec had been given another excuse to avoid that cold hard truth that sprung to his mind every time his heart beat out of rhythm, but as he looked at Ellie now he knew he couldn’t put it off for much longer. 

“Give me my sandal and I’ll drive you back,” Ellie told him and held out her palm to him. 

Alec reached for her ankle instead. Encircling her slender ankle in one hand, he gently slipped the sandal back onto her foot with the other. His fingers lingered at the juncture of skin and bone, and his thumb brushed over the raised blood vessel that pulsed with all that life she had in her now and still to come. She had so much ahead of her, and soon he would be nothing more than a memory of a dark time in her life that she had overcome. 

He looked up to find her watching him intently and he let go of her foot. 

“We should get going,” Ellie reminded him. “I’ve got a long drive.”

“Right,” Alec agreed but he didn’t want her to leave. Ellie shared his reluctance. 

Alec leaned back against the boot beside her. From here they could almost see the distant lights of the town they’d left behind. He thought of the cold and empty hotel room that awaited him, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other until he felt the familiar warmth of her shoulder against his. 

He didn’t know how much time had passed, but Ellie had to call him back from a very long way down a treacherous road that began in Sandbrook and could possibly end here with Miller. 

“Did you finally tell Iris the truth?” she asked. He turned to her and the stream of passing headlights flickered across her face and glittered in her eyes. He thought about kissing her. Instead he let go.

“I didn’t have to tell her anything,” he admitted and stood blinking up at the night sky, “She already knew.” 

_Oh, Alec, why didn’t you tell me that you were dying?_

Another car roared past them and Ellie clumsily slid off the boot. She brushed some pollen from the back of her long flowing skirt and bent over to adjust her sandal. Straightening up, she caught him openly staring at her. 

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed. 

“Nothing,” he croaked and averted his eyes. He spotted the chewed up pill packet on the pavement and kicked it as hard as he could into the darkness. 

“Alec.”

“Let’s go, Miller.” 

He shoved past her and tried to ignore the spark he felt when the back of his hand grazed that bloody black skirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t hate me! It took me ages to write this one and I went through like 10 drafts. If it wasn’t for Anna I never would’ve finished it. So yeah, any cc or whatever you feel like saying would be very much appreciated! Thanks again!


	16. Hot and Hazy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos and comments! You guys are wicked awesome! Hopefully Alec and Ellie aren't too OOC in this chapter, but I think that by now if you're still reading this, you've already accepted it or you will after this chapter.

Ellie drove them back to his hotel and Alec realized just how far she’d let him go. Sitting in the open air on the boot of the car had helped, but the moment they were confined in the stuffy car and he found himself once again trapped in the passenger seat with Ellie in that black skirt, the restlessness started spreading from his fingers to his toes. He played with the radio dial, drummed his fingers on the console, and fidgeted in his seat until Ellie told him to knock it off. 

“I’m not doing anything,” he protested. 

“You’re distracting me,” she accused him. Alec thrust his fingers through his hair and almost told her that _she_ was distracting _him_. 

“Calm down, Alec,” Ellie said soothingly. At the next light she rubbed her hand over his thigh. He stilled and their eyes only had to meet for a split second for her to realize her mistake. The light changed and all ten of her fingers returned to grip the steering wheel, but now they couldn’t stop tapping out an erratic beat. Agitated, she squirmed in her seat and glanced at him several times before she finally snapped at him. 

“Stop staring at me!” 

“Keep your eyes on the road,” he shot back. 

“You moved my seat,” she complained. 

“How many times do I have to apologize?” he groaned. 

“You have a _medical_ condition that restricts you from driving and you never thought to tell me that?” Ellie retorted shrilly.

“I’m sorry!” he repeated himself for the nth time, straining against the damn seatbelt. “It was stupid and I didn’t mean to endanger you.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She pulled into the hotel and she snagged the first spot.

“Why didn’t I tell you?” he echoed her incredulously. “Are you serious, Miller?” 

“Of course, I’m serious!” 

He had the seatbelt off and was leaning over the console before she even put the brake on.

“Why are you acting like this is news to you?” he asked, his eyes scanning her face. “You’ve known for the last nine months that I have a heart arrhythmia.” 

“I didn’t realize how bad it was,” she admitted and ripped the keys out of the ignition. He actually _laughed_ at her. It was a strangled sound that made him choke and her cringe. 

“Oh, I’m glad someone finds this funny!” she spat and pushed open her car door. Alec grabbed her elbow and jerked her toward him. 

“Miller, you were _there_ when I had a bloody heart attack!” he reminded her. 

“Yeah, and I told you not to fucking die on me!” she snarled. 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded. 

She lifted her hands to frame his face and examined him. The strength in those small white hands still surprised him and he wondered when or if she would ever realize that she had the power to break him. Alec flinched as one of her nails carelessly scraped over the cut on his jaw. His hands grasped at her wrists and Ellie released him immediately. 

“You really don’t get it,” she whispered, awed or horrified, it didn’t matter anymore. “God, Alec, if I wasn’t so fucking upset with you -” she shook her head and got out of the car. 

Alec scrambled after her. He expected her to head toward him or the hotel but she stormed off in the opposite direction, leaving behind him and her car. 

“Miller!” He cursed under his breath and went after her. “Miller, where do you think you’re going?”

“I need another drink.”

He stopped dead in his tracks. Whatever it was he thought she was going to say to him, it hadn’t been that. 

“Are you coming or what?” Ellie called over her shoulder. Alec glanced back at the hotel and her car and then reluctantly caught her up. There was a dive bar within walking distance and the loud music had kept him awake on some nights. Alec silently prayed that wasn’t their destination. The door swung open up ahead of them and Alec realized that tonight was one of those nights. A man lit up a cigarette and Ellie walked right through the cloud of smoke and up to the bar. 

“No,” Alec refused, shaking his head at her. The man puffed at his cigarette and Ellie looked back at him through the smoky haze that separated them. “Miller, I’m not going in there.” 

“Fine.”

Ellie left him on the street. Alec swore and followed her inside. The smoker chuckled and took another drag on his cigarette. 

*

It was Alec’s worst nightmare. The music was terrible, it was intolerably hot, there were too many people, and the wedding party had had the same idea as Ellie. The bloke that had knocked over Ellie’s glass of wine earlier had bought her a beer and seemed to think that Alec and Ellie were his best mates. Alec went to the restroom and came back to find the imbecile wanted to be a little bit more than best mates with Ellie. He’d taken Alec’s stool at the bar and Alec was done. Ellie put her beer down to check her phone and Alec took a sip of it. He nearly spat it back out.

“How can you even drink that stuff?” Alec sneered as the idiot lurched off to take a shot with the bridesmaids. “I think I was eighteen the last time I ordered one of those.”

Ellie laughed at him and tucked her phone away. Taking the beer back from him, she took a long swallow. 

“I was probably a little older than that, but it was before I met Joe,” she recalled with a faraway look. 

“Are you still in love with him?” he asked thoughtlessly. Ellie stiffened and he realized that he’d actually said that out loud. 

“Are you still in love with yours?” she asked before he could backtrack. 

“What do you think?” he snorted and Ellie took another drink. 

“I don’t know what to think, Alec,” Ellie confessed and stroked the neck of the bottle. “You gave up your life to protect your daughter and that woman. Sometimes I wonder if she’s the thing that’s holding you back…”

“Holding me back from what?” Alec asked, and she finally looked him in the eye for the first time since they’d walked into that obnoxious smoky bar. Ellie shrugged and slowly brought the bottle up to her mouth again to moisten her lips. 

Alec stole the bottle from her and gulped down several swallows of that nasty stuff, before grimacing and putting the now empty bottle down on the bar behind her. It wasn’t scotch but under these circumstances it would have to suffice. 

“You’re buying me another beer,” Ellie told him. Alec didn’t even blink. 

“No, I’m not,” he said and held her gaze. “I think we’re done here.”

“Oh, are we?” Ellie asked and raised her eyebrows. Alec nodded and that was when that bloody imbecile returned with a second beer for her. Ellie accepted it with a smile, and damn it that woman was going to be the death of him. 

“Sorry, who are you again?” the idiot asked Alec, even though they’d already made these introductions three times. 

“He’s my boss, Charlie,” Ellie lied smoothly. 

“I’m not your boss,” Alec corrected her as Charlie yelled something at one of the other groomsmen. 

“No, but you still act like it,” Ellie grumbled. 

“Do I?” Alec asked and his arm crept around her. He stroked his hand over her ribs in a very _unprofessional_ manner before dropping it again on the bar behind her. Ellie shivered, but pasted that cheery grin on her face when clueless Charlie returned with a very lame crack about the groomsman. 

Alec had just about had it with this bloke, and this place, and Ellie. Did she have any idea of what she was doing to him? She was definitely wearing some kind of perfume tonight because despite the stench of cigarette smoke, cheap vodka, and stale beer, he could still smell something tantalizingly sweet and maddeningly familiar every time he took a breath. The music suddenly got louder and Alec saw Charlie lean in to whisper something in Ellie’s ear. Alec cleared his throat and coughed loudly. 

“What’d you say?” Ellie asked Alec, unable to hear him over the chorus of the awful song. She scooted closer to Alec and Alec didn’t like her new friend’s reaction. It was as if he hadn’t even considered the idea that Alec could’ve been with Ellie until that moment. Ellie wobbled a little on the stool and Alec curled an arm around her.

“She has a boyfriend,” he announced to the drunken idiot staring at them. 

“ _Alec_!” Ellie admonished him. 

“You do!” he reminded her, in case she was too tipsy to remember Geoffrey. He was almost certain that was who she had been texting less than fifteen minutes ago.

“How many bloody times do I have to tell you that Geoffrey and I aren’t even – what are you doing?” Alec had been silently communicating with the hammered bloke, trying to penetrate through several inches of a thick skull and god knows how many shots and drinks that fellow had imbibed. The arm he’d casually offered Ellie for support had turned into an almost possessive grip on her waist. Ellie was saying something but it was hard to hear her over the music. 

“What?” he asked, reluctantly breaking eye contact and subtly moving his hand from her waist to the bar behind them again. Ellie rolled her eyes. 

“I said –“ Ellie never got to finish that sentence because Charlie butted in. 

“Forget him love, and come dance with me.” He offered her a hand and what must have been in his warped mind a charming smile. 

“Oh, no, I don’t dance,” Ellie refused him with a polite smile, but she shifted closer to Alec. 

“Oh, come on, just one dance!” the guy insisted and playfully grabbed Ellie’s arm. Ellie visibly flinched and that was it. 

“She’s not interested,” Alec told him firmly. 

“Alec –“

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” the moron asked, talking over Ellie and becoming a belligerent drunk in the blink of an eye. Ellie was forgotten and it was all about Alec Hardy now. 

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” Alec said between gritted teeth. “You’re wasting your time.”

“What is your problem?” clueless Charlie demanded, stepping close enough that Alec noticed the way he reeked of alcohol. “You’ve been glaring at me the entire night like I’m trying to steal your girl when she’s more interested in having a good time than hanging out with some grumpy –“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, we’re leaving,” Ellie interrupted him, downing half her beer in one swallow. She slammed the bottle down on the bar and glared at both men. 

“Good,” the imbecile said and slung his arm around her shoulder. Ellie stared at him as if he’d lost his mind and if it had been any other situation Alec would have laughed. He thought that Ellie was going to knock out the bloke’s slightly crooked front teeth, but she restrained herself and easily stepped out from under his hairy arm. 

“I’m leaving with him,” she explained patiently to clueless Charlie and turned to Alec. “Get your coat.”

“Thank God.” Alec breathed sigh of relief.

He shrugged on his coat and held Ellie’s out for her. The moron was gaping at them and Alec wondered what the bloody hell he had to do to drill it into his thick skull. Ellie thanked Charlie for the beers with a forced smile and turned to leave with Alec. 

“That’s it? You make me buy your drinks and flirt with me all night and then you leave with your grouchy boss?” Charlie demanded, looking between the pair. His features twisted into another one of those warped smiles, but this one had a harder edge as he reached for her again. “Come on, Ell, the night’s still young and you look like you could use some love and attention.” 

Ellie went white as a sheet and Alec caught the bloke’s beefy wrist. 

“Don’t touch her,” he growled at him. Charlie had been loud enough to gain an audience and several pairs of ears further down the bar were straining to hear as well as some the groomsmen that had suddenly appeared at Charlie’s back. If it hadn’t been for the deafening music, the whole bar probably would’ve been staring.

“Why, what are you going to do about it?” the fellow snarled back at him and Alec felt the spark of a white hot rage licking at his insides. He wasn’t sure what would’ve happened if Ellie hadn’t swiftly stepped in between them with a hand on his chest.

“He’s not going to do anything,” Ellie said and glared at Alec before turning darkly to Charlie. “If you even think of laying a finger on either one of us I will twist your balls off,” she threatened him. “Do I make myself clear?” 

Charlie frowned at her and then glanced between them again. 

“You said he was your boss,” he spluttered. 

“I was,” Alec admitted and wrapped his arm around Ellie, “But now she’s um my – boss,” he finished sheepishly, unable to come up with an adequate term for what exactly Ellie was to him, and well aware of the three larger inebriated men behind Charlie. Ellie blinked at him as if she wasn’t sure if this was a compliment or an insult. 

“Right, sweetheart?” he murmured and squeezed her shoulder. Ellie relaxed and chuckled when she finally got it. 

“Right,” she agreed and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. 

“I don’t fucking believe this,” Charlie hissed. “What’d you guys get together like two seconds ago?” 

Alec and Ellie looked at each other and laughed. Charlie shook his head. 

“You’re a real bitch for leading me on like that –“

Ellie’s eyes flashed and Alec was genuinely afraid for the bloke as she whipped around to face him. Alec probably should have let her give clueless Charlie what he deserved, he probably should have let her go right then and there in that crowded bar at one o’clock in the morning, he probably should have done a lot of things, but by then it was already too late. 

Catching her by the arm, he spun her back into his arms. And there in the midst of all that smoke, poor lighting, terrible pounding music, and a crowd of drunks that reeked of cheap alcohol, he kissed Ellie Miller. Ellie gasped against his mouth, but a moment later her keys hit the sticky beer stained floor, followed by her purse. It spilt open but neither of them noticed or cared. Alec pushed her up against the bar and Ellie’s abandoned beer bottle tipped over. At that point, Charlie finally gave up and walked away, but that didn’t register either. 

Eventually, Alec broke away from her to catch his breath and that was when it hit them.

“I think he’s gone –“ he explained himself, panting.

“Who?” Ellie asked, breathlessly, her arms still wrapped around his neck. Alec leaned in again and the barkeeper snapped at them to move. They jumped apart and Ellie nearly tripped over her own purse. Hurriedly, they bent down and shoved everything back inside of it. Alec’s head was spinning and he had to support himself against the bar for a minute. Ellie checked to make sure she had her keys and everything else back in her purse. 

“Ready?” 

Ellie nodded and he led the way out of the bar. He stumbled at the door and Ellie caught him around the waist. 

“Alright?” she whispered. Alec nodded. Leaning heavily on her, he managed the steps and broke away from her to rest against the side of the building. Even the fucking bricks were vibrating with the music, and Alec had to close his eyes and struggle to get his breathing back under control. 

“Alec,” Ellie said, concerned.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he apologized, without opening his eyes. 

He rubbed his forehead, wondering if the throbbing in his head was a new symptom or just the effect of the damn music and smoke still swirling around him. That and Ellie. She was too close and his whole body was still buzzing with that kiss. 

“I could’ve handled him,” she told him, when at last he opened his eyes. 

“I know but I couldn’t take it anymore,” he spat, his Scottish accent bleeding into his speech. He pushed off from the brick wall and Ellie followed him. “You have a boyfriend and he shouldn’t have – _I_ shouldn’t have -“ The lightheadedness struck again and he breathed in deeply and grasped at a passing lamppost. Ellie wrapped a hand around the same post and lazily circled around it until they were face to face again. 

“Why didn’t you stop me?” Alec asked her suddenly.

“Because I didn’t want you to stop,” Ellie confessed, blushing. “And I didn’t think you did either.”

“Miller,” Alec sighed her name. Ellie hugged the lamp post and ducked her head. Her sandals were suddenly very interesting. Alec wished he could’ve kept his eyes on her feet but his gaze climbed higher, slowly drinking her in. They were standing in the circle of the lamplight and she was practically glowing. 

“’s okay, Alec, I get it.” Ellie nodded.

“No, you don’t,” Alec said, shaking his head. Ellie raised her eyes, but they couldn’t look at each other directly. 

“I know what you were doing,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken it at all. “We can forget it ever happened.” She offered with that fixed I’m-fine smile he’d always hated. It was only recently, now that she was smiling more often again, that he’d really started to pay attention to how many different smiles she actually had and this was the only one now that he couldn’t stand. He used the post to swing in closer to her and the smile dissolved. 

“I wasn’t faking anything,” Alec clarified roughly, “And I won’t be able to forget that.”

Ellie’s eyes widened and her lips parted in surprise but no sound came out. And she looked so beautiful lit up in the lamplight that Alec couldn’t stop himself from dipping down to steal one last quick kiss from her. Ellie grabbed his tie before he could cut it short. Her mouth opened beneath his and he could taste the beer on her tongue and hear the beat of the music in the distance. But this time she didn’t drop her purse and Charlie wasn’t watching and the barkeeper didn’t tell them to move. Alec clung to the post with one arm and dragged her as close as he dared with the other. Eventually he let go of that sturdy piece of metal to slide his hand in her floral smelling hair and trusted Ellie to keep him from falling. 

He held himself back, she took her time. 

When they broke for air, he was dizzy, but Ellie was right there with him with her arms around his waist. There was something steadying about her presence this time and the air around them was clearer and cleaner. 

“This is a bad idea,” Alec told her, when he had his breath back. 

“Probably,” Ellie agreed with her eyes closed and her ear pressed to his heart. 

“Do you want to stay with me tonight?” he asked her, nervously toying with her mussed curls. Ellie lifted her head from his chest to look at him and he felt the blood rush into his face. “I know we’re not going to – I don’t think you should drive home,” he stammered.

“Okay.” Ellie nodded. That had been too easy and Alec realized that half of him had been hoping she’d say no. 

“Come on,” he whispered. His arm returned to her shoulders and she tucked herself into his side. They trekked back to the hotel, through the lobby, and into the lift. Alec hit the button and as the doors closed and they resumed their position, he caught a glimpse of their reflection. It wasn’t a mirror, but it was strange how the distorted image reflected and highlighted how much they could’ve passed for that drunken happy engaged couple that had stumbled out of the restaurant earlier. 

The doors opened on his floor and he took her with him. The room wasn’t far and he had to let go of her to get the room key out of his wallet. She followed him inside with a hand lingering on his back. He tossed his coat onto the bed and turned on the light. The room wasn’t as shabby as the last place he stayed for cheap but it was small and cramped. Being alone, it had never bothered Alec, but as soon as Ellie closed the door behind her and squeezed past him into the room, he became conscious of how tiny and how little room there actually was. 

“Nice,” Ellie remarked, poking around the room and finally stopping to look at a generic painting framed on the wall of bluebells in a field. 

“Do you want something to drink?” he asked her. Her head shot up and he scratched at the back of his head. “There’s uh, water and tea, might be some coffee in there too but nothing stronger…”

She accepted the bottled water and sat down when he motioned to the bed. He perched himself on the only chair and it felt like déjà vu. She looked at him and he knew she was thinking the same thing.

“It’s a bit weird,” she admitted. “I feel like I should be over there and you should be here and we should be talking–“ she tapered off and fiddled with the cap on the bottle. It was strange how after all this time they’d finally gotten one of the answers that he couldn’t give her that first night. Her eyes roamed the room before finally settling on him again. 

“Don’t tell me you’re planning on sleeping in that chair,” she scoffed at him.

“Actually, I was going to sleep in the shower,” he quipped. 

Ellie snorted and toed off her sandals. 

“There’s only one bed,” he pointed out to her as he copied her and removed his own shoes. 

“That’s never been a problem before,” she reminded him and stooped to line her shoes up next to his in the corner of the room. 

“You didn’t have a boyfriend then.”

Ellie rolled her eyes at him and moved his legs out of the way so that she could stand in front of the mirror. 

“I texted my “boyfriend” earlier and told him that I needed more time and some space,” she said, removing her dangly earrings one at a time. “But that’s not the problem, Alec, is it?” She turned to face him with a hand on her hip. 

Alec rubbed his hands over his thighs and rose from the chair. The fact that she wasn’t tied to Geoffrey didn’t alleviate his nerves. If anything her bold move had only heightened them. He wondered how she would react if he actually showed her the real issue here. His eyes flitted to the spot where the drugs were stashed away and Ellie tossed her earrings heedlessly onto the side desk next to her purse and keys.

“What are you afraid of Alec?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“Come on, Miller, let’s not do this tonight.”

“Tell me the truth.”

Alec touched her shoulders, gently moving her out of the way. He went to the night stand and tugged open the drawer so violently that it came right out. Throwing the King James Bible aside, he tipped the drawer’s contents onto the bed in front of her. He sorted through them until he came upon the white bottle. Ellie took it from him and skimmed the label. 

“How many?” she asked. 

Alec blinked at her. She didn’t wait for an answer. Twisting off the lid, she tapped two out into her palm and handed them to him. He took them and swallowed them dry. Reaching around her, he picked up his bottled water and chased it down. 

“You better put that in your coat,” she said, exchanging the white bottle for the little plastic pack of the other pills he carried with him. Alec retrieved his coat from the bed and automatically followed her instructions. Ellie started picking up the medicine and shoving it back into the drawer. The wooden box wouldn’t go back into the nightstand and she dropped it on top of the table. 

“Was that all? Was that what you were so bloody worried about me finding out?” Ellie asked, her eyes blazing. “You’ve been tiptoeing around me for almost two months and it was all because of a couple of pills!” Ellie shook the box for emphasis and Alec winced at the sound of all those pills and plastic rattling around in there. He pushed past her and shoved it back in on his first attempt. Turning, he tossed his coat on the bed and Ellie railed at him. 

“Jesus, Alec, we’ve been seeing each other every week! Did you honestly think that I didn’t know about all the drugs you have to take for your heart condition? I’ve had to force feed them to you on more than one occasion for Christ’s sake!”

“And yet you were shocked when you realized that I couldn’t drive?” he exploded and paced away from her. The room wasn’t big enough and he wound up stepping on her toes again a moment later. “Fuck, Miller, I could’ve killed both of us! Why did you let me drive?” he demanded, getting right up in her face.

“Because I TRUST you!” Ellie snarled, refusing to back down. “I thought you knew your limits but I forgot how bloody reckless you are when you -”

Alec kissed her hard and fast. Dragging her against him, he clung to her and buried his face in her hair. He pressed kisses to her hair, to her hairline, to her temple, to her cheek, her jaw and any area of skin he could reach without letting go of her. Every kiss was an apology and Ellie understood. 

“Relax, Alec, relax,” she soothed him. 

“I swore I wouldn’t let you down,” Alec whispered, fisting his hand in her hair. He was close to tears now and he couldn’t stop it. Seeing the drugs laid out like that had pushed him over the edge. Too much shit had happened to them and Alec was tired of fighting the one good thing that had come out of all the hell they’d both been put through. 

“You can make it up to me,” Ellie whispered back, shushing him. 

And that was the problem. 

Alec was terrified he wouldn’t have time. 

*

They fell asleep fully clothed in a tangle of limbs on top of the duvet. Ellie woke up a few hours later, sweltering. She crawled out from underneath Alec and went to the loo. Returning to the bed, she tripped in the dark over the Bible. She picked it up off the floor and put it back in the drawer and that was when she found his phone. 

Alec was dead to the world and Ellie had already been forced to go through his mobile after she stepped on it that one time. She opened his photos and swiped through a series of morbid case pics until she found the photo she was looking for. The screen was still cracked and it was a picture of a picture, but Ellie was certain that the older woman on Alec’s left was the same woman they met in the restaurant. The young girl on Alec’s right had to be about the same age as Tom, but she looked like she was desperately trying to act like she was much older than that. Ellie stared hard at the girl, trying to find some trace of Alec in her, but they looked nothing alike. Ellie wouldn’t have known she was Alec’s daughter except for the way he was gazing and smiling at her. Her eyes flitted back to the Alec in the photograph; healthy, happy, well groomed, and beaming at Keira, and she wondered why she couldn’t find any trace of _that_ man in the broken man sleeping behind her on the bed. 

Sighing, she went to close out of the album and accidentally clicked on a recent addition. Alec probably wasn’t even aware of it, but Tom had snatched Alec’s phone and taken a selfie with his eyes crossed and his tongue sticking out. Ellie smiled at the picture and then spotted Alec in the background with Fred on his lap and the slightest hint of a smile that suggested he might’ve known what Tom was doing and kept the photo anyway. Ellie stared at the Alec from a month ago and thought that maybe, just maybe there might be some hope for the present Alec Hardy after all. But as she replaced the mobile in the drawer and stared at all the pills, she wondered if that battle had already been lost. 

A heavy hand landed on her shoulder and Ellie jumped out of her skin. She dropped the drawer and the drugs spilt everywhere. 

“Shit.”

Alec sat up behind her and switched on the light. Ellie scrambled to pick everything up, scrounging around on the carpet until she was certain she’d collected every last one of the packets. Alec took the drawer from her and jammed it back into the nightstand. 

“What were you doing?” he asked, squinting at her with sleepy eyes. 

His hair was sticking up and he hadn’t even bothered to fully remove his tie when they collapsed together on the bed hours ago. Ellie ran a hand through her own matted hair and found the clip still snarled in her curls. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” she lied and ripped it out. 

“It’s because it’s so bloody hot in here,” Alec complained and took off his tie. Ellie removed the thin cardigan she was wearing over her sleeveless blouse and went over to the thermostat. She laughed when she saw it. 

“What’s so funny?” he asked her. 

“You never shut off the heat,” Ellie giggled and lowered the temps. “No wonder why it’s so fucking hot.” She turned to look at him over her shoulder and almost jumped out of her skin again because he was right behind her. 

He didn’t bother moving her out of the way. Putting on his glasses he must’ve retrieved from somewhere in the room, he reached up and over her to examine the box. Ellie remembered that one time nearly five months ago when he’d followed her into a closet to examine the fuse box. Five months ago, she blamed the odd electrical spark she’d felt in his proximity on static, tonight she knew better. 

“Huh. I haven’t touched this all week,” Alec said, oblivious to the effect he was having on her. He leaned in closer to her and the box with a frown. “It must be broken.” 

“That’s bullshit,” Ellie said. Alec stepped back from her as if he’d forgotten she was there. Ellie turned and poked his chest hard enough to send him stumbling to the foot of the bed. “You jacked up the temperature to get me out of my clothes.”

Alec landed half sprawled on the bed and gaped up at her. Ellie chucked her cardigan at him and seductively tugged at the hem of her blouse. She wiggled her hips as she approached him and lifted her leg as if to straddle him. Alec spluttered something incoherent and Ellie lost it. 

“I’m teasing you, Alec,” she chuckled and flopped down on her stomach on the bed beside him. “Ugh, it really is hot in here,” she groaned.

“Then take off your clothes,” Alec suggested seriously and plucked at the back of her blouse. 

Ellie shoved him away and he laughed.

Rolling over onto her side, she watched him as he sat on the edge of the bed and unbuttoned his shirt. His glasses slid down the bridge of his nose and he absentmindedly pushed them back up, even though they weren’t required for unbuttoning a shirt. Ellie propped herself up on an elbow and Alec shrugged out of his shirt. The belt dropped to the floor beside it and the glasses just made it onto the nightstand. He stood up and pulled his undershirt up and over his head, adding it to the pile of discarded clothing before turning to get the lights in nothing but his slacks. 

He froze in front of her and missed the light switch completely. He was so used to being alone here that he’d forgotten again that she was in the room. Ellie tried to joke about him messing with the heat so he could give her a strip tease, tried to joke about anything, but her mouth had gone dry at the sight of his bare chest. 

They had no qualms about sharing a bed, but Alec had never even untucked his shirt and he’d never looked at her like _that_. Usually his eyes were closing well before he got into bed with her, but right now they were wide open. She blushed beneath his heated gaze and lowered her eyes. 

“Do you want something to sleep in? I might have a shirt or a jumper…” He trailed off awkwardly and Ellie remembered the smell and feel of his coat wrapped around her. She was tempted to ask for it, or anything that smelt like him, but it was too damn hot in the room and she wasn’t sure what might happen if she started taking off her clothes and putting on his. 

“I’m alright,” she said and dropped her head to the pillow. 

Alec shut the light off and shuffled around in the dark for a minute before he lay down next to her. He didn’t touch her, and Ellie recalled that first stormy night when he’d been too knackered to move and too desperate to sleep to care about his hand on her hip or her head on his chest in that narrow bed. So much had changed since that night and Ellie wondered if maybe crossing all those lines had ruined whatever it was that drew them together that night and kept bringing him back.

She stretched out her hand toward his bare chest and he jumped. 

“Sorry,” she whispered and tucked both of her hands beneath her chin to keep them from wandering. Earlier, he’d said that this was a bad idea and he was the one that pushed her away in the kitchen weeks ago. She chewed on her lip. 

“Alec?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure you’re alright with this?”

“Ellie,” Alec sighed and she held her breath. He took so long to answer her that Ellie feared he’d drifted off or worse that he was choosing the right words to tell her no. 

“Go back to sleep, Alec,” she whispered and rolled over. 

“ _Ellie_.” Suddenly, she felt his hand on her hip and he was pulling her backwards. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her against his bare chest. All of Ellie’s doubts and insecurities were driven from her mind along with everything else as the heat of his body melded with hers. 

“Your sister’s going to kill me,” he whispered and kissed her bare shoulder. “But I can’t stay away from you.”

“Then don’t,” she breathed as his silky hair tickled her cheek. He trailed kisses along her collar bone and up her throat until she giggled and he paused just shy of her lips. 

“Alright,” he said as if they’d made some kind of pact. 

“Alright?” Ellie asked, smiling. He held her tighter and Ellie felt his smile against her cheek 

“Alright,” he chuckled and kissed her goodnight. And for the first time in what felt like forever, Ellie thought that they might really be _alright_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've been writing this story for almost TWO YEARS! I started out writing this thing for shits and giggles but over the last year it's become like a life raft, and to be honest I'm not sure if it's what's taking me out to sea or what's bringing me back to the shore. I'm trying to devote as much time as I can to writing and finishing it but unfortunately RL does tend to get in the way and these two characters have a delightful and irritating habit of surprising me. I doubt I'll complete this story by the second anniversary, but I'm praying that I CAN complete it and that it won't take me another TWO YEARS. Thanks for sticking with me and any constructive criticism is appreciated!


	17. Burning through the Fog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU FOR THE FEEDBACK! SORRY FOR THE DELAYED UPDATE! Thanks nannyogg for reading this 18 million times and editing! I take full responsibility for any errors remaining.

The morning was heating up with the promise of another uncomfortably muggy afternoon. It was only half past ten, but Alec could feel the sun burning through all the layers he had on as he briskly walked back to the hotel. The familiar smell of coffee and the allure of caffeine were making him jittery and the paper cups were searing his sweating palms. Or at least that’s what he told himself as he distractedly crossed the street and almost got hit by a van. 

The driver slammed on the brakes to avoid killing him and laid down on the horn. Alec swore as his heart skipped a beat and the hot liquid sloshed over the back of his hand. 

“What the hell are ya doing?” the driver hollered at him through the open window, before speeding off. 

Alec leaned up against a lamp post - the same bloody lamp post where he’d kissed Ellie Miller the night before - and wondered the same thing. In the harsh light of day, Alec could see that the post was rusted in spots where the paint was peeling and that someone had signed their name in neon letters and tried to claim it as their own. But soon there would be a fresh coat of paint and all traces of that person would be gone.

Alec closed his eyes. It took him a moment to catch his breath, but he was alright. He had to be. Stepping away from the post, he headed toward the hotel. 

Ellie threw the door open before he had a chance to tackle getting the key in his wallet. 

“You idiot,” she greeted him. “You left the key here.” 

“No, I didn’t.”

Ellie turned to swipe the card off the side table where he’d carelessly left it last night, and Alec stepped inside and kicked the door shut behind him. The room was too small and he spilled more hot liquid when she spun around. He bit back a curse and handed her the caffeinated cup of coffee that kept scalding him. 

“What’s this?” she asked, baffled. 

“Piss in a cup,” he shot back and took a sip of whatever decaffeinated thing he’d wound up ordering. It smelled like coffee but it tasted closer to what he told her he got her. “Careful, it’s hot,” he warned her, too late judging by the look on her face. He reflexively reached for the cup before she spilt it, and the hot beverage once again slopped over his knuckles as he set both cups down on the side table. 

“Did you burn yourself?” Ellie asked as Alec licked the coffee off his skin. Grabbing his elbow, she ignored his protest and dragged him into the loo.

It was hardly big enough for the two of them, and Alec found himself pressed up against the sink next to Ellie as she ran his hand under the cold water. He remembered the last time he’d burned himself on the stove in her kitchen because he’d never seen Ellie in a skirt before. She was still wearing the bloody black skirt, but her curls were wet and loose, and she smelled like the same hotel shampoo he’d used that morning. It was even more maddening than the scent that too often he carried back to his hotel room just from being near her. 

“I think I’ll live, Miller.” He shut the tap off. 

“I should hope so,” Ellie teased and went to squeeze past him, but Alec seized her wrist before she could escape. He wanted to reel her in and snog her right there in the cramped space, but he stopped at the sight of her bruised wrist. Anger licked at his insides and his gaze snapped up to hers. 

“Ellie, did that moron last night –“ 

Ellie snorted. “Charlie didn’t lay a finger on me,” she reminded him and Alec recalled the way that Ellie had stood up and told the imbecile that she would twist his balls off if he touched her or Alec. She wiggled free from him and stalked out. Alec followed her, still troubled by the red fingerprints that had been left on her skin. 

“Was it Geoffrey?” he practically growled.

“Don’t be daft,” she scoffed and sat down on the bed. “Geoffrey is too afraid to touch me at all since I told him my ex-husband was a murderer _and_ a pedophile.” 

That stunned him. Judging from the way Lucy went on about them and the first time he caught them together in the foyer, he expected it to be quite the opposite. He sat on the bed beside her, now even more upset and agitated. 

“Is that why you’re here with me and not with him?” he wondered. 

“No,” Ellie denied immediately, and then she flushed and admitted in a small voice, “I don’t know.” She rubbed her arms as if she was cold, but even though the room was shaded and Ellie had fixed the heat, it was still warm. It got even warmer when she rested one of her hands on his thigh and raised her brown eyes to his. 

“You’ve always treated me differently. You didn’t blame me but you didn’t treat me like I was a piece of glass.”

“I broke you in that interrogation room and then I did it again in that parking garage,” he reminded her bitterly.

“Maybe you did, but I’m stronger now because of that,” she said softly and rubbed her hand down toward his knee. He snagged her wrist before she created anymore friction, and his fingers matched up perfectly with the marks he’d left on her the night before, when he’d forcefully stopped her from dialing 999 on the side of the road. They both froze and stared at the spot where their skin met. 

“Are you?” he asked her hoarsely, “Because sometimes I think that I’m making it worse, hanging around and reminding you of everything that _hurts_.” He stroked his thumb lightly over the inside of her bruised wrist and lifted his eyes to hers. Ellie gazed at him for a long moment before leaning in to touch his face with her free hand. The soft pad of her thumb swept beneath his eye, measuring the lack of sleep he’d gotten over the last few weeks. 

“Sometimes, it does hurt,” she confessed, “But sometimes I wonder if it’s harder for you.” Her hand slid behind his ear and into his hair. Alec closed his eyes as her fingers subtly sought out and found the little white scar he’d gotten during the Broadchurch case. 

“How did this happen?” she wondered, frowning. 

“Slipped in the shower at the Traders,” he lied. His heart rate picked up as she cupped his jaw and turned his head toward the sunlight coming in through the crack beneath the shade. 

“And this one?” she inquired, outlining the cut he’d gotten a little over a week ago. 

“Nicked myself with the razor,” he repeated the same lie from yesterday and willed himself to stay calm.

“And the bruises on your back? Are you going to blame that on the razor too?” she demanded and her fingers twitched against his jaw. He never should have taken his shirt off, but he’d forgotten she was there and it was so bloody hot in the room. She must’ve woken up before he got in the shower this morning and noticed. He glanced down at her wrist and the place where he’d marked her as the one thing he was still selfishly and desperately hanging onto, and he let go. 

Standing, he retrieved her coffee and whatever he’d bought himself. Holding the cup seemed to steady him. This time he didn’t spill a drop as he passed it to her. Ellie accepted it and took a few sips before he spoke again. 

“I passed out and fell down a flight of stairs,” he explained, examining the monochrome pattern on the side of the cup. 

“Was that the first time you passed out?” Ellie asked.

“No.” 

“Does it happen a lot?” 

Alec hesitated and then shook his head. It was happening more than it should, though, but Ellie didn’t need to know that. 

“When was the last time -“ Alec couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Can I at least finish this before you continue the bloody interrogation?” he snapped and forced himself to swallow down some of the terrible stuff without grimacing. Ellie glared down at her coffee cup. 

“I think I’m entitled to some answers after you nearly crushed all the bones in my wrist because you were in so much pain,” she shot back. 

“Why didn’t you say something?” he demanded, horrified. 

“I did,” she reminded him, “And I tried to call for an ambulance too, but you wouldn’t let me!” 

“Is it sprained or broken? Do you need to see a doctor? Does it hurt?” Alec’s questions came like rapid-fire, but Ellie waved his concern aside like he’d done with hers. 

“Alec, _I’m_ fine,” she insisted. “But you’re missing the point!” 

There was a soft popping sound. He’d almost crushed the paper cup in his hand and the lid had actually come off. Disgusted with himself and the decaffeinated piss in it, he got up and dumped the remainder down the sink in the bathroom. Tossing the empty cup into the rubbish bin, he scraped his hands down his face and took several deep breaths. God forbid, he passed out again. 

He returned to find her in the same spot, but now she was staring at that stupid bluebell painting on the wall. Cautiously, he perched himself on the edge of the bed beside her and tried to figure out what kept drawing her attention to it. 

“I think it’s crooked,” Ellie pointed out, cocking her head. 

“I hate it,” he chimed in. 

Ellie leapt up from the bed and put her coffee down on the side table. Reaching for the painting, she attempted to fix it by tilting the frame, but it was the painting itself that was off centered. She took a step back and realized what Alec had noticed within the first few hours of his stay in that hotel room. 

“You can’t fix everything, Miller,” Alec said.

“I can try, can’t I?” Ellie replied and looked at him as he drew himself up to his full height. 

She held his gaze and that was all the encouragement he needed. Reaching for her wrist again, he raised it to his lips. He brushed a kiss over the disturbing bracelet of bruises, wishing he could remove his fingerprints and that hurt, like a new coat of paint would cover up that name on that light post where he’d kissed her. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. His thumb traced over her thin blue veins that carried her blood back to a heart that was so much stronger and steadier than his own. Ellie moved closer and he dropped her wrist so that he could wrap his arms around her. He felt the quick but rhythmic thud of her heart in spite of the layers of clothing, skin, and tissue that separated them, and it was comforting and reassuring. 

“I’m not hurting you now, am I?” he asked quietly. 

“No,” Ellie whispered. As he concentrated on her heartbeat instead of his own, he could almost believe her. 

“What about now?” he wondered and reverently touched his lips to the pulse point behind her jaw. 

“No,” she breathed. Her hand returned to his hair to press him a little closer to that testimony of the strength of her heart. 

“And now?” He moved to kiss the same spot on the opposite side of her neck. 

Her pulse jumped beneath his mouth, and then her fingers were curling at the nape of his neck, and _she_ was kissing _him_. He got a teasing taste of coffee, a hint of pent up frustration, and a flash of a woman that seemed to know exactly what she wanted. And for some screwed up reason she clearly _wanted_ him. The idea burned into his mind and turned that spark into a flame. Alec knew that it was fucked up, and that it was only because he’d already seen her emotional scars and taken an inventory of them like she’d explored his physical scars that morning. He knew too that his fingerprints had left a deeper mark, but at the moment those thoughts were sliding away along with everything else. He forgot why he wasn’t supposed to be rumpling the fabric of that bloody black skirt and her already wrinkled blouse, and she forgot why she wasn’t supposed to be backing him into the wall and stripping off that stifling coat he was still wearing. 

He wasn’t sure how far they would’ve gone or if his heart would’ve let him, but the sound of her mobile grounded them before they could even consider finding out. 

Alec groaned and Ellie sighed. His heart was racing like he was coming down off of the high he used to get when solving a case. For a split second Vicky flitted through his mind; her mischievous smile, the way she laughed, that first time she’d seen _that_ look in his eyes and kissed him right there in the empty stationhouse, and he knocked over a whole box of transcripts that they were still picking up when their DI came in at dawn to congratulate them on solving that first case. Years later, it would take him two minutes to destroy his entire office after she broke his heart, but he had it cleaned up by the time their CS, Smith, arrived to take his statement. It took him much longer to piece his heart back together, but as Ellie looked up at him, he wondered if maybe another fragment had fallen into place. 

“Are you going to get that?” Ellie asked him breathlessly. Alec blinked at her as the buzzing started up again by his feet. They both looked down at his discarded coat, and he discovered that it was his phone that had interrupted them this time. 

“It could be your daughter,” she said and bent down to retrieve his coat. She straightened up and held it out to him. Alec swallowed and took it from her. 

“It’s not,” he rasped.

“You don’t know that –“ She broke off when she saw the look in his eyes. He humored her and checked the screen as the useless device went silent. It wasn’t his daughter, but the name and number of the last incoming call shocked him, although it shouldn’t have. The past always had a nasty way of catching up, and Alec had been running for so long that he’d almost forgotten what he was running from. Iris’s reappearance was only the beginning… 

“What’s wrong?” Ellie asked.

“Nothing,” Alec lied and shoved the phone into his pocket before she could take a peek. Ellie opened her mouth and Alec shook his head. He dropped his coat to the floor and propped his hands on his hips. There were things he should tell her, he knew that, but he didn’t know where to begin. 

“She’s still not answering your calls,” Ellie stated. Alec looked up at her. 

“No.”

“And you still haven’t told her about…” She trailed off and touched her own heart, as if simply pointing out the actual issue or saying it out loud was too difficult for them. 

He shook his head and the silence stretched between them. Then she stepped toward him and rested her hand on his arm. 

“I could take you there, right now,” Ellie offered and reached up to fix his hair. Alec gazed down at her and wondered why she cared about him when the rest of the world had stopped a long time ago. Even his own daughter had rejected him, and Alec didn’t think he’d ever be able to repair the damage he’d done. And yet this woman…

“Come on, I’ll take you home,” she murmured and kissed his cheek. Squeezing his arm as she passed him, she went to use the loo and left him standing there in the middle of the room, at a complete loss for words. 

*

Ellie had offered to take him home once, six weeks ago, when they were sitting on the steps of the house that he once told his daughter Keira they could call their own. The last rays of the setting sun had been in Ellie’s face and he had wanted to capture that light in her brown eyes and soak it up. Today the sun was high in the sky and the glare was almost too much. And when they finally did pull into a neighborhood Alec recognized, he’d never felt further from home. 

His car was in the driveway but it didn’t belong to him anymore. There was a new scratch on the driver’s side and a massive dent in the bumper. The mirror was crooked and one of the rims was missing. 

Alec ran his hand along the roof of the car and remembered the day Keira had come with him to pick it out, and how disappointed she’d been when she’d found out they didn’t come in pink, or purple, or any color at all really. He sniffed and tried not to think of the day when he’d stared at the broken window and the damaged interior, and kicked the tire so violently that he’d almost fractured his foot. And he’d frightened Keira and made her cry. 

“You said your daughter’s sixteen?” 

“Aye, turned sixteen in February,” Alec replied and rubbed at the scratch. Ellie eyed the car warily, probably wondering what her son would do to hers in three years. At least she’d be there to witness it. Alec wasn’t even sure what his daughter looked like anymore. 

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said and blinked back tears. “We shouldn’t have come.” It felt wrong seeing his car there in a driveway that wasn’t his, marred by signs of accidents that he knew nothing about. He didn’t even know if she was alright. It was no wonder she hated him; he was a horrible father. 

“Exactly how long has it been since you saw her?” Ellie wondered and squinted up at him.

“Don’t,” Alec snapped and wiped a hand down his face. “Don’t start, Miller.” He backed away from the car but he couldn’t elude her as easily. 

“When was the last time you actually spoke to her?” 

Alec shook his head and looked directly into the sun. He gazed up at it until his eyes burned and he was forced to look away. The flares of that bright light were still there, making it impossible for him to focus on the woman in front of him, or the stupid white house behind her that represented everything that he’d lost. He’d give it all up again, happily, if he could have Keira back for one more moment.

“It’s been a long time,” he admitted, his voice breaking, “A really long time.” 

Ellie slid her arm around him but Alec was frozen. He was going through the last few phone calls when he’d actually gotten more than one or two monosyllabic words out of a girl that used to get in trouble at school for talking too much. Only one stood out in his mind and those three devastating words she’d said to him before she’d hung up. The words and what had prompted them seeped into him like an icy rain drenched one’s clothes, and for the first time since he walked out of his hotel room yesterday morning he felt a strange and unexpected relief from the heat. 

He detached himself from Ellie and walked over to the sleeker newer model of his old banged up car. His eyes swept over the sparkling exterior that was obviously too beloved to be trusted in the hands of an inexperienced teenage driver. His mind recalled the details of the night his car had been broken into and the evidence was stolen, and more importantly the details that Vicky had deliberately skimmed over that Alec had found out later from SOCO and eventually from DS Aaron Cooper himself. He tapped the glass experimentally. His eyes scanned the manicured lawn and discovered a set of pruning shears that had been abandoned next to one of the neatly trimmed bushes that lined the front of the house. He reached for them before he was even aware of what he was doing. 

“Don’t even think about it.” 

Alec dropped them into the bush, shocked by how well Ellie could read him now. A couple of branches snapped, but it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as smashing in Cooper’s car windshield would’ve been. Ellie glared at him and he shoved his hands into his pockets to resist the temptation of trying again. 

“You don’t even know what I was doing,” he protested. 

“Yes, I do,” Ellie argued and crossed her arms over her chest. “Because it’s what I would’ve done.”

They stared at each other and Alec remembered the sight of her bedroom yesterday: torn photographs, ripped pages, a smashed radio, and an alarm clock that refused to break. 

“It’s not worth it,” she told him, throwing his own words back at him. “You’ll only wind up hurting yourself.” 

Alec didn’t understand how breaking glass would hurt any less or be any less life-threatening than hearing his daughter tell him that she still hated him. He kicked at the stupid bush and heard the gratifying crack of another branch. Ellie smacked him. 

“I didn’t bring you here so that you could destroy half the property,” she reminded him. 

“I never asked you to take me here,” he snarled, rubbing his arm. 

“Go up there and ring the bloody doorbell before I do it for you,” she ordered and forcibly turned him around. She gave him a hard shove in the direction of the door. Alec fetched up against the railing and his knee banged into one of the wrought iron posts. 

“What the hell is going on here?”

Alec groaned and gripped the railing with one hand and his forehead with the other. He’d always hated that deep ridiculously posh accent and he’d been hoping that just this once his ears would be spared. Ellie spluttered behind him and Alec would’ve found it comical in another life. 

“We were only –“

“Is he alright?” A large hand slapped down on his shoulder and Alec recoiled. 

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he hissed and straightened up beside Ellie. Aaron Cooper, standing three steps above them, towered over them. But as soon as he recognized Alec, he shrunk a little bit and the color drained out of his already pasty face. 

“DI Hardy.” Alec didn’t bother correcting him.

“Cooper.” 

“DS Mil – Richardson,” Ellie piped up, lying about her position and botching up her own name in the face of the blonde giant that was his former DS, friend, and the man that had shagged Alec’s wife for years. Cooper frowned at the two of them, and Alec’s heart sank as he suddenly recalled something that Vicky had said to him yesterday. 

“You’re his _DS_?” Cooper eyed Ellie’s wrinkled skirt and blouse with a raised brow.

“Yes.”

“No,” Alec said at the same time as her. Ellie’s gaze was boring a hole into the side of his head but Alec wasn’t going to let Cooper win this one. Not this time. Cooper’s eyes narrowed slightly but Alec’s face was a blank slate.

“Is Vicky here?” he asked. 

“No, she went for a run,” Cooper answered. 

“You sure about that?” Alec snorted, remembering all the times Vicky had gone for a “run” and instead engaged in a different kind of exercise with Cooper. Anger flashed in Cooper’s grey eyes, but it was shame that flushed his cheeks as he folded his muscular arms over his chest. 

“She’ll be back soon,” he assured them confidently, and then reluctantly offered, “You can wait here or come inside.” 

“Oh, I’d love to come inside and have a cuppa,” Alec accepted with sarcasm and all of his teeth bared. “Maybe we could reminiscence about the good old days when you were fucking my wife –“ 

“Alec,” Ellie interrupted him sharply. Alec had forgotten she was there. Their eyes met and Alec checked himself, barely. She didn’t need to hear this or see him like this. Alec wondered what the hell she had expected, bringing him down here and opening up old wounds. His daughter wasn’t even here. Vicky had told him yesterday she was with a friend for the weekend, but he hadn’t remembered until he saw Cooper. They’d driven all the way out there for _nothing_. 

“Do you want some tea?” Cooper asked with forced politeness. Alec would rather drink poison than have a cup of tea with this man that used to fetch coffee for him. 

Ellie’s phone rang before either one of them could reply. She fidgeted for a moment and then pulled it out. Her face fell and she looked at Alec. 

“It’s Tom. I’ve got to –“

“Go on,” Alec urged her. She lingered and Alec motioned in the direction of where they’d parked the car on the street, several houses down. “ _Go_!”

Ellie scowled at him, he was a bit rude. But she took the phone call and reluctantly walked off, leaving Alec alone with Aaron Cooper for the first time since he’d found out that he’d fucked up the Sandbrook case and fucked his wife. 

“Keira won’t be back ‘til tomorrow,” Cooper informed him as soon as Ellie was out of ear shot. 

“She wouldn’t have seen me anyway,” Alec said. Cooper didn’t contradict him. Alec followed Ellie with his eyes until she got to the street and he couldn’t see her anymore. The moment she vanished from view, he turned to face the man that took his life. 

“Guess I should congratulate you,” he sneered as cold quiet rage started building in that gaping hole inside of him. “Vicky told me you’re getting married.”

“Hardy,” Cooper began, sighing. Alec grasped the metal railing with both of his hands. Cooper was fumbling an apology, but that pity in his eyes hurt more than anything he could have said to him. 

“I don’t want to hear it,” he cut the bastard off. “The only thing I want to know is _when_ it started.”

“Let it go, Hardy,” Cooper sighed again and combed his fingers through his curling blonde hair. 

“When?” Alec demanded, clinging to that railing and struggling with that painful need to know how long. “ _When_?!” Cooper went bright red at the same time Alec started seeing red. 

“For fuck’s sake!” Cooper exploded. He slapped both of his huge hands down on the railing with enough force to physically rattle Alec almost as much as the words that followed. “It was like ten years ago!” 

Alec’s head jerked up and Cooper realized that Alec had had no idea that it had gone on for that _long_. Vicky had started to tell him that terrible night when his world fell apart and Alec had told her to stop. There was only so much a man could take, but that need to know had been growing inside of him ever since. He’d patched together a rough timeline in some of his darkest hours, but he never thought to look _that_ far back. 

“It didn’t start out like that,” Cooper hastily backtracked. Alec could barely hear him over the sound of his blood rising. “I always fancied her but Vicky, she was – she cared about you a lot, and it was years before she even considered –“ Cooper’s voice faded, swallowed up by his own guilt and the roar of the blood in Alec’s ears. 

“Ten years,” Alec repeated hollowly. A burst of memories flashed before his eyes of him, Vicky, and Cooper, working together so well that it didn’t feel like work at all. There had been no one that Alec had trusted more than those two people and the betrayal had sliced deeper than the loss of that case, his reputation, and his career.

“You fucking bastard!” he spat. 

“I’m sorry, Alec,” Cooper apologized, pitying him. 

“You’re _sorry_?” Alec sputtered. That rage coiled in his stomach and twisted with that cold hard truth that was becoming more painful with each passing day that he held on to it.

“I really am, especially since I found out about your health.” Alec’s heart jolted painfully in his chest. The anger was threatening to blaze right through him and take the damn organ along with it. He could barely feel his fingers but he wasn’t sure if the numbness was part of his condition or the fury. Cooper bent over and rested one of his large hands on Alec’s trembling shoulder, and Alec’s heart was struck again, harder this time. “I talked to DI Worthington and shit, Alec, I had no idea it was that bad. I didn’t tell Vicky or Keira yet, but I think you –“ 

Alec had heard enough. He harnessed three years’ worth of anger and punched Aaron fucking Cooper in the face. 

*

Cooper didn’t fight back. He already had everything so he had nothing to fight Alec for. 

“I could press charges,” Cooper threatened, massaging his jaw. 

“You won’t,” Alec retorted. The fight had gone out of him the moment he realized Cooper wasn’t going to do anything, that and the fact that his heart literally couldn’t handle anything more. Cooper had dragged him into the house after he’d nearly collapsed and the pair now sat in the kitchen. Alec had a glass of water and Cooper had a princess pink icepack pressed to his face that Vicky had gotten for Keira years ago when she was an accident prone child. Once again Alec thought that it would have been funny, a lifetime ago. 

“Sorry,” he forced the word out once he had his breath back.

“No, you’re not,” Cooper said and gave him a small slightly bloody smile. “I’m surprised it took you almost three years to do that.”

“Well, you are much bigger than me,” Alec pointed out, seriously. 

They looked at each other and Alec felt the corner of his mouth twitching in what might’ve been the ghost of a smile to mirror Cooper’s. But the moment passed because that life was gone and he’d never get it back. 

Alec cleared his throat and fiddled with his water glass. 

“So, Worthington told you…” he started, but he couldn’t bring himself to finish. 

“She didn’t mean to,” Cooper defended the woman that used to work with both of them in Sandbrook until she was promoted to DI in another town well before the maelstrom hit. He winced and put down the icepack. Resting his forearms on the table, he leaned forward to explain. “I walked in on an argument between her and our former CS, Smith. She wanted to bring you back in but Smith had to tell her that wasn’t possible because of your condition. Obviously, you heard that Worthington thinks their latest child murder could be linked to the Sandbrook case –“ 

Alec knocked over his glass, spilling water everywhere and startling Cooper. 

“Stay away from that case!” he growled. “So, help me god, Cooper, if you cock that case up again and give those families false hope I will come back from the dead and murder you myself.” 

Cooper’s eyes widened. 

“It’s true?”

Alec neither confirmed nor denied it. He no longer knew if they were referring to his health or the case that had destroyed it. 

“That _hope_ , once you take that away again, it’ll kill them,” he warned Cooper. After seeing the faces of those grieving families that they had failed, Cooper should have known better. Alec’s heart fluttered uncomfortably in his chest, cruelly reminding him that _he_ should have known better too, since he’d had more than his own share of false hope and the crushing disappointment that inevitably followed. He thought of Ellie and her boys and squeezed his eyes shut until they went away. Cooper opened his mouth but Alec spoke over him. 

“Don’t tell Keira or Vicky,” he said, holding the other man’s gaze, “About any of this.” He swept his palm across the soaked tablecloth as if he could encompass _everything_ in one small gesture. 

Cooper frowned but he nodded. Alec exhaled again. They sat in silence, only broken by the sound of Cooper’s grunts of pain and Alec’s slightly labored breathing. The kitchen felt cool and sterile, even though he was certain the walls were painted the same shade of yellow that Vicky had insisted on for Keira’s nursery sixteen years ago. Alec swallowed and righted the water glass with shaking fingers. 

“You’ll take care of them, right?” His voice cracked. 

“Yeah,” Cooper said. Their eyes met again across the table. “You don’t have to worry about them, Alec.” Cooper had lied to him for years, but Alec knew that this time he was telling the truth. 

“Thanks… Aaron.”

They stood up. Alec spotted something on the fridge behind Cooper in the midst of Vicky’s collection of tacky magnets and messy post-it reminders. He froze and Cooper followed his gaze. Cooper extracted the photograph from beneath a sea shell shaped magnet that Alec recognized as a chosen Christmas gift from Keira that he himself had purchased for an absurd amount of money. 

“You can keep it,” he told Alec. 

Alec took the photograph of his daughter. With one last nod and one last look around for any other sign that his little girl lived there, he walked out of the house without saying goodbye. 

*

Ellie hung up the phone as soon as she saw him. She didn’t know how long he’d been there, hunched over on the bonnet of her car with his elbows on his thighs. He must’ve seen her reaction to his sickly white face because he immediately straightened up and asked if Tom and Fred were alright. 

“They’re fine,” she answered. Her hand passed over his sweaty forehead and through his damp hair. Alec blinked at her slowly and then those heavy eyelids drooped shut. He swayed toward her and she caught him in a tight embrace. 

“Are you alright?” she demanded. 

“Spectacular,” he grunted. His heart didn’t seem to be racing, but Ellie could sense that it was a different kind of broken heart. 

“You didn’t see Keira?” she whispered. 

“No,” Alec mumbled. “She’s not here.” 

“Oh, Alec, I’m so sorry.” She rubbed circles over his back until he started shaking so violently that she had to let go. He plopped down on the bonnet of the car and Ellie discovered that he was _laughing_. She stared at him, horrified, as he reached up to wipe the tears from his eyes. His knuckles were bruised on his right hand and Ellie feared the worst. 

“You bloody idiot! You smashed the windshield with your bare hand?” She seized his hand and examined it for lacerations and shards of glass. 

“Nah.” Alec wheezed. “I hit him. Broke his jaw.”

Ellie pressed down on one of his mottled knuckles. Alec hissed in pain and squirmed. 

“There’s no way you broke that man’s jaw,” Ellie snorted, recalling the sheer size of DS Cooper in comparison to Alec now. It was painfully obvious how emaciated he was compared to that other clean-shaven man she’d seen in the old family photos on his phone last night; the man he’d been before the Sandbrook case. 

“Don’t I at least get some credit for _trying_?” he barked and wriggled his fingers free from hers. Ellie glared at him and Alec grimaced as he tried to flatten his hand out on his thigh. “I waited almost three years to do that and the bastard still managed to break my bloody hand.”

“It’s not broken,” Ellie assured him and covered his sore hand with hers. 

“Feels like it,” Alec grumbled. Ellie stroked the back of his hand and then gently took it in hers. She brought it to her lips and kissed each one of his aching knuckles. 

“Better?” she asked him. 

“Better?” he echoed her, ripping his fingers from hers. “ _Better_?” He stood up so quickly that he almost knocked her over. “Ellie, nothing can make this better. You can’t fix this. No one can. Even if I could shatter Cooper’s jaw, get my job back, solve that case, and tell my daughter that I’m –“ He choked on his own words and swallowed all those things that he needed to tell his daughter so badly. Closing his eyes, he inhaled and slouched against the side of her car. He brought both hands up to his face and thrust his fingers into his shaggy hair. 

“I’m sorry,” Ellie apologized and looked down at her now scuffed sandals that Lucy had gotten for her for her birthday, six weeks ago when Alec first kissed her and made her foolishly hope that maybe they could escape the world for a moment just by holding onto each other... “I - I thought that this would help,” she stammered. 

“Ellie.”

He didn’t say anything else, only her name thick and heavy with his native accent, but it was more than enough. Without looking up, his hand found and clumsily clasped her shoulder. She tripped toward him but his other hand came down on her opposite shoulder, keeping her at arm’s length. 

“’S not your fault,” he told her, hiding his downcast eyes beneath messy bangs. “You are the _only_ thing that came out of that fucking storm that kept me sane.”

Ellie couldn’t help herself, she snorted. Alec lifted his head and his eyes met hers at last. 

“You basically told me last night that I was the reason you were _losing_ your sanity,” she recalled, grinning in spite of the gravity of whatever he was struggling to tell her. 

“Did I?” Alec blinked at her. 

“I believe you affectionately called me your _penance_ and accused me of trying to kill you on numerous occasions.”

“Well, you have…” Alec reminded her, smirking. 

“It was one time!” Ellie protested, “And you deserved it after breaking into my house and threatening my son with a gun.”

“Horseshit,” he called her out and rolled his eyes. “I didn’t even carry a gun when I worked with you.” 

“Good thing too, or we might’ve shot each other,” Ellie quipped. 

Alec’s eyes widened, aghast; and then suddenly he threw his head back and laughed. His arms slipped from her shoulders and encircled her waist. This time when Ellie tried to get closer to him, he let her. He was still holding her beneath that warm summer sun, long after that rusty but heartwarming sound had faded. 

“I meant it, you know, you’re the one thing that’s come out of all of this that I wouldn’t change…” Alec didn’t have to say anything more, the way his breath hitched said it all. 

“I know,” Ellie hushed him and kissed him quickly. “I feel the same way.” 

Alec had saved her from drowning in her own grief simply by being _there_. She hoped that he knew that and that more than anything she wanted to help him in the same way he’d helped her, if he’d let her.

The drive back to the hotel was quiet but not entirely uncomfortable. Ellie swung into the same spot she’d vacated earlier and the clock on the dash flashed at her as she shut the car off. Half the day was already gone, but even though they’d spent most of the morning awkwardly dancing around and avoiding each other, and Alec hadn’t seen his daughter, and Ellie hadn’t finished the packing, Alec’s large eyes were watching her and Ellie didn’t feel like it had been a complete waste. 

“Do you want to come up?” he blurted out. He blushed and scratched at the back of his neck, clarifying, “We could order food, you must be hungry…” He looked so hopeful that Ellie felt bad turning down his offer. 

“I have to get back,” she explained. “The house still needs to be packed up and my sister already threatened to show up in a few hours with the boys. Fred broke half of her dishes and Tom’s getting antsy without his computer for over twenty-four hours.” She rolled her eyes.

“Right,” Alec said and nodded. “Right.” He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands down his thighs. 

“So, I’ll see you…?” He trailed off, optimistically. 

“Yeah,” Ellie agreed. Alec nodded again and looked as if he were going to lean in to kiss her, but changed his mind at the last second. 

“See you, Miller.” 

He got out of the car and Ellie stared after him. Sighing, she shoved the key back into the ignition and pulled out onto the main road. 

It only took her twelve minutes in the empty car to change her mind. 

She called her sister first and by the time she got her to shut up, she was back at the hotel. Lucy was still squealing about Geoffrey when she hung up and Ellie didn’t have the time or energy to correct her. There was also that nagging voice that reminded her that there was another reason why she was so hesitant to tell Lucy the truth and why she was so desperate for every second of one more day. 

She was out of breath and halfway down the third floor hallway by the time he picked up his bloody mobile. 

“Can you let me in?” 

“What?” 

He swung open the door and she tumbled inside the room and into him. His phone hit the floor and she scooped it up before she stepped on it again. 

“What are you doing back here?” he asked anxiously as he helped her up and shut the door. “Is everything alright?” 

“You owe me twenty quid,” she informed him and slapped the phone into his palm. 

“Are you serious?” His eyebrows shot up into his hair. 

“’Course, I am,” she bluffed. “Remember we made a bet about that engaged couple at the restaurant last night. Now, I’d be willing to forgive the debt on one condition.” 

“Seriously? You expect me to believe that you came all the way back here and ran up three flights of stairs –“ 

“I didn’t _run_.” 

“Miller, I can feel your heart racing from here.”

Neither one of them had made a move from the narrow entryway (not that the room itself was much bigger) and they stood facing each other, mere centimeters apart. It occurred to Ellie at the same time as Alec that her heart wasn’t pounding from the exertion alone. Taking in the disheveled hair, unknotted tie, and unbuttoned shirt certainly didn’t calm her down. She must’ve interrupted him when he was undressing. 

“You didn’t come here for twenty quid,” he stated.

“I came back for you,” she confessed in a rush and admitted, “I need you to help me pack up the house.”

“But your sister –“

“I told her that I wasn’t done and that I needed more time…” She wrung her hands and looked at a small water stain on the ceiling over his head. She was being an idiot; the man had slept in her bed at least three times and came to her house many more times, he knew all her darkest secrets, and he’d kissed her and awkwardly invited her back to his room twice, and maybe even gone so far to admit or at least imply that he might actually _want_ her and perhaps even _care_ about her _a lot_. Taking a deep breath, she smoothed down her blouse and readied herself to meet his gaze. She shouldn’t have worried. Alec closed the space between them and kissed her so sweetly that the words came easily. 

“Come home with me.”

He kissed her again, harder. Ellie wondered if he’d even heard her at all when she felt him drawing away from her bit by bit and his quiet reply against her lips. 

“Okay.”

She waited for him to pack up some of his things and pretended not to notice when he opened the drawer and dumped half of its chemical contents into his bag. 

“Got everything?” she asked and stepped up to straighten the knot in his tie that he wore like a second skin.

“Think so.” 

He grabbed his coat and stuffed the key she handed him into his wallet along with something else. Ushering her ahead of him, the door clicked shut behind them. 

The hallway looked exactly the same as it had last night even though it was mid-day and hours had passed since that moment when they’d stumbled to his room; drunk off of a couple of glasses of wine, a cheap bottle of beer, a first kiss in a crowded bar and a second under a lamp post. Alec slung his coat over his shoulder and took his bag from her. He reached for her in the lift, tucking her into his side. And as his lips brushed over her forehead, Ellie closed her eyes and tried to tell herself that Alec was coming home with her to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two years ago, I finished watching Broadchurch season 1, bawled my eyes out, and wrote the first chapter. Exactly one year ago, I was pissed off that I was stuck at work instead of at home and writing. I couldn’t even look at the person that was responsible for the mistake that forced me to stay the extra hour, let alone say goodbye to her. And it was the last time I ever saw her _alive_. Don’t forget to hug the ones you love and make your peace with the ones that are a little harder to love, because you never know if you’ll get that chance again. Anyways, sorry for the delay and that this chapter was a lot sadder than I meant it to be. Any feedback and constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated!


	18. Still Waters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again thanks to mykelara/nannyogg for listening to me whine and saving what’s left of my sanity. To everyone that’s still reading this and letting me know that I’m not dropping this into a black hole, _thank you_. 
> 
> And to SEA, it’s been a year since I drove past the water and through that tunnel with a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel but I’m still not ready to let go.

They packed up the house one box at a time. It wasn’t easy for Ellie. She was ready to move on with her life, but there were some things that were hard to leave behind and other things that were smeared with memories of Joe that she had to take with her. Alec tried to help but there was only so much that he could do. 

The nursery turned out to be a trigger, a minefield of memories of the happy life and those two wonderful boys that Joe had given her. This time there were no tears and Ellie didn’t break anything. She sat on the floor for god knows how long with a worn stuffed animal hugged tight to her chest, immobilized by whatever the toy signified to her that she was unwilling to share with Alec. The reaction or lack of one frightened Alec more than the sight of her bedroom had yesterday afternoon. There was nothing for him to physically clean up and he didn’t know how to box something up that only she could see. 

“I think we need to take a break,” Alec suggested and crouched down in front of her. Ellie’s head snapped up but her eyes went right through him. 

“Ellie.” He cupped her elbow in a gesture that was so automatic and instinctive for him, but it too carried a stigma and was a reminder of the very first time he touched her and why.

Ellie nodded. Wiping her nose, she stood. The stuffed animal dropped to the floor and she tripped over it. She caught herself on the edge of the crib and Alec picked the stupid thing up and gingerly placed it in the open box as if it were a ticking time bomb. Ellie’s eyes followed it into the cardboard and Alec thought for a moment she might drag it back out or cry. Alec had to put his hands on her shoulders and gently steer her away. 

It infuriated Alec that Joe hadn’t even set foot into that house let alone that nursery, and yet he was a silent looming presence. A closed door wouldn’t shut that ghost out and his footsteps followed them downstairs and into the kitchen. Alec rummaged through the barren fridge and threw open each of the cabinets they’d emptied yesterday until Ellie picked herself up from where she’d slumped against the table, grabbed her purse, and walked outside. 

Alec barely made it into the car and buckled himself in before she was peeling out of the driveway. She didn’t stop until they were beyond Broadchurch’s limits and the sun was setting in a rosy pink sky. It was another miserable seaside town but it wasn’t Broadchurch, and they were able to sit on the seawall outside a takeaway place without the fear of being recognized or being seen together. Not that they were together. Alec stabbed at a suspiciously purple leaf in his boxed salad and wished he knew how to reach her. They were past the point of shitty platitudes and after exploding earlier it would be hypocritical of him to even attempt to give her advice. 

“What am I supposed to tell Fred?” she wondered. “When he starts asking about his father?”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Maybe the truth, if he’s old enough…”

“He’ll never be old enough,” Ellie insisted vehemently and Alec’s heart cracked.

“Tom was twelve and he seems to be handling it well, considering…” He stopped himself because they didn’t need to mention Danny or how entangled they all were in the case. Alec had even accused the lad of murdering his own former best friend at one point, and yet Tom had proved himself to be made of a stronger mettle. 

“It’ll be different because Tom will remember his father, Fred won’t,” Ellie argued. The lettuce in his mouth tasted like mud and Alec had a difficult time swallowing it and forcing the question that he knew he _had_ to ask. 

“What if he wants to meet his father?”

“He’ll have to wait until he’s seventeen because I’m _never_ setting foot in that prison,” Ellie spat.

Alec nodded but Ellie wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were locked on a pair of sunburnt tourists on the docks below trying to distract their worn out toddler that was dangerously close to a full out tantrum. Sure enough the young boy stamped his feet and started screaming. The balding man lifted the child up into his arms, whispering what must’ve been words of comfort in a language neither one of them could understand. The boy wrapped his chubby arms around the man’s neck, muffling his sobs against his father’s garish union jack t-shirt. Hastily packing up, the woman shouldered her rucksack and joined them. She spoke to them in that same swift incomprehensible tongue, smoothing down her son’s curls and hooking her fingers into her husband’s belt as they walked off. Ellie didn’t need a translation to add to that longing for her old life that Alec knew she so desperately wanted back, some things were universally recognized. 

“We were happy,” she said softly. 

Alec’s plastic fork snapped in half. He forced down one last bite of the bitter greens and left the rest and the bits of plastic to drown in the oozing dressing that did little to cover up the taste of dirt. Or perhaps that bad taste had nothing to do with the questionable quality of the takeaway place and everything to do with the filthy stain that Joe Miller had left behind, even though he was rotting in a prison miles away. 

Tossing the containers, he sat back down closer to Ellie but still a hand’s breadth apart. The harbor was so eerily calm that the final rays of sunlight reflected off of its surface as if it were glass. It was unsettling and reminded Hardy of the calm that only came before a terrible storm. Leaning into Ellie, he bent his head down toward hers. 

“You’ll be happy again, one day,” he assured her, like an oath he wouldn’t be able to keep. 

Ellie looked at him with a small wry smile that inspired hope even if her eyes still carried that weighted sadness. 

“One day…” she trailed off. 

“One day.” It was a promise but he wouldn’t be the one to fulfill it. He didn’t think his heart would allow that to happen. But damn it, he would do everything in his power to make her as close to happy as possible. 

Ellie kissed him as the sun was swallowed somewhere amongst the boat masts and the glassy water. Instead of breaking the kiss, Alec deepened it, lifting his hands from the cement seawall to hang onto her soft curves instead. 

A fog horn sounded in the boatyard below them and his heart gave a threatening lurch in his chest. He broke away from her, breathing hard, and was shocked by how much time had passed. The sky was rapidly fading to black, the first stars were coming out, and the docks below were lit once he was able to breathe freely again.

“What time is it?” Ellie asked and Alec was somewhat relieved to hear how dazed she sounded. Alec felt around for his mobile before remembering that he was wearing a watch. His eyes had trouble focusing on the numbers and Ellie found her own phone. 

“Fuck, I’ve got a missed call from Tom!” Ellie hopped off the seawall and rang back her son. Alec fished out his mobile and was surprised when it took him a moment to read the time on the bright but splintered screen. He blinked until his vision cleared and had to blink several more times to confirm the surprising fact that he had not one but two new voicemails. 

“ _Alec, my aunt called me_ six _times today. I don’t know what you told her but if you don’t call me back or get your skinny arse up here I will tell Iris exactly why you’ve been hiding in Broadchurch for the last ten months and why you keep putting off the bloody_ –“ 

He deleted the message and dug his pills out from his pocket before listening to the second one. 

“ _Alec, I know you said you’d visit next week but I am_ concerned _about you. I called Marty, my nephew - I’m not sure if you remember him - but he promised to get in touch with you. Please, call me back when you get this. And darling, I… I think it’s time for you to come home…_ ”

Alec listened to the message three more times and hated himself each time he heard the way Iris’ voice hesitated at the end. Despite being his only maternal figure ever since he lost his mother at age nine, Iris had never been overtly emotional or affectionate; but Alec’s run-in with her had clearly left her much more shaken than she’d let on in the restaurant last night. 

The shrinking list of contacts in his phone blurred and Alec didn’t know if it was his poor eyesight, a new symptom of his worsening heart condition, the huge crack Ellie had put in his phone, or his emotional state that made it impossible for him to call either Martin or Iris back. He tucked the phone away and gazed out at the lights dancing on the water. It still bothered him that only the slightest current stirred those tranquil waters, like the whole world was lying in wait for the storm that was bound to hit, because nothing could ever stay so still and so peaceful. 

Alec got up and walked to the end of the sea wall. He paused for a moment with his hands on the metal gate. It wasn’t high and Alec easily climbed over with the use of his long legs. He kept plodding down the slippery slope, supporting himself with a hand on the railing, until his feet reached the wooden pier below. He stood there in the midst of those silent boats, barely rocking in the unnaturally quiet water. It reminded him of the boatyard in Broadchurch where he had his heart attack, thanks to Ellie’s cowardly ex-husband. He had yet another reason to hate the sodding bastard that stole fourteen years of Ellie’s life and robbed her of a happiness and an innocence that Alec knew she’d never get back. 

He wandered to the end of the pier and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He missed his coat and his suit jacket even though the stifling humidity of that scorching afternoon they’d had blanketed the earth and kept him warm enough without those protective outer garments. Or perhaps it wasn’t the lingering heat, but the fact that he’d just snogged Ellie Miller on a seawall where anyone could’ve walked by that had elevated his body temperature. He scratched at the back of his burning neck and couldn’t remember the last time he’d done anything like that. Vicky had fallen out of love with him years ago, and Alec hadn’t realized how much he missed that simple feeling of getting so caught up in someone else that you both lost track of all sense of time until he found it again with Ellie. He knew that it was only a fleeting sensation and he wanted to hang onto it and cling to that illusion as long as he possibly could. Recalling the way Ellie had breathlessly burst into his hotel room hours earlier with eyes so bright that he couldn’t resist kissing her, Alec would be willing to bet another twenty quid that the feeling was mutual. 

And yet, they were both struggling to keep their pasts from ruining whatever the fuck this was even as those shadows flooded in faster than they could find a light to keep them out. Ellie needed to pack up her house and move into a new one, leaving behind the home she’d always known. And Alec… His phone vibrated in his pocket and he studiously ignored it. 

“For god’s sake, all I’m asking for is one more fucking night,” he hissed as his mobile went off _again_. He cursed under his breath and squeezed his eyes shut. The thing finally stopped ringing, replaced with the vibrations and rapid footsteps of someone running down the pier. He opened his eyes and suddenly she was there. Her hair was a rat’s nest, her face was an ugly red from running, and she was spitting mad; but Alec thought she had never looked more beautiful than she did in that moment. That realization and the painful smack she gave him on the arm, almost knocked him clean off his feet and into the water. But Ellie grabbed a fistful of his shirt and dragged him toward her. 

“Next time you go wandering off fuckwit, can you at least have the decency to pick up your bloody phone?!” 

Alec rolled his eyes and Ellie shook him.

“I mean it!” she snarled and let go of him as quickly as she latched onto him. She spun away from him and Alec thought she was going to fall over the side. He caught her wrist and she glared up at him. It was the same wrist he’d clung to the night before when he thought for a split second that it might really be the end. 

“Sorry,” he apologized and shoved both of his hands into his pockets. His left hand curled around his mobile and he seriously considered chucking the damn thing into the harbor. But that wouldn’t solve anything because it wasn’t the actual problem: he was. 

He turned to go and she stopped him with a hand on his chest. 

“I worry about you. I _am_ worried about you,” she said seriously and slid her hand up and over until her fingers were splayed wide over the spot where his unreliable heart was hidden. It hurt more than the smack she’d given him. Even though her touch was light, Alec couldn’t get by her. 

“Don’t worry about me, Miller,” he said roughly, moved more than he wanted to let on. His hand on her face was anything but rough. He tangled his fingers in her snarls and guided her head to his chest. She sighed as he kissed the top of her head and desperately tried to tell her how much he worried about her. 

“Tom and Fred?” he asked instead. 

“They’re fine. I think Lucy put Tom up to it, wanted to check up on us.”

He hesitated and then wondered aloud.

“Does she know that you’re not with –“

“No,” Ellie sighed again and lifted her head to look at him. Before either one of them could address _that_ issue, Ellie looked around them and swiftly skirted the subject.

“What are you doing down here?” She frowned. “I thought you hated being on the water.”

“I can’t swim,” he blurted out. 

“You don’t know how to swim?” Ellie gasped. 

“I was taught how to swim,” he defended himself. “I can’t swim anymore,” he explained but judging by Ellie’s expression he hadn’t explained anything. “I’m afraid of drowning,” he clarified and Ellie seemed to accept this answer. 

“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here,” Ellie pointed out and for the first time Alec realized how odd it was that he had come all the way out there, like he’d been drawn by some invisible force. 

“It’s the water,” he confessed. “It’s too calm and it’s freaking me out.”

Ellie snorted and dropped her forehead to his chest for a second. “Alec,” she said, raising her eyes. “It’s a harbor, it’s generally calmer than the ocean.”

“I know what a harbor’s like, Miller,” he snapped. “But the water’s never this _still_ …”They looked around and Alec could hear the water lapping against the posts that were all that would stop them from plunging into the water if the aging wooden planks beneath their feet decided to give way. 

“The tide’s coming in,” Ellie observed. Taking him by the hand, she led him up the pier and back toward the steep ramp he’d slipped down. He paused and Ellie looked back at him and over his shoulder at the gently rocking boats and the lights scattered on the water. 

“It is pretty,” she stated, smiling. 

“Yeah,” Alec said, looking at her. He kept one hand on the railing and the other wrapped tightly around her fingers. He didn’t let go of her hand until they got back into the car. 

*

They found themselves silently standing in the kitchen, staring at the line of boxes Alec had haphazardly taped and piled up yesterday afternoon. The light flickered overhead and they welcomed the distraction.

“The bulb probably needs to be replaced,” Ellie sighed. God, she hated this run-down cottage, maybe because she knew she could never call it home. Alec rolled back the sleeves of his ridiculously formal button-down that he was still wearing. If it wasn’t for that one time he showed up at her house dressed in jeans, she’d seriously wonder if he owned anything other than suits. 

“Do you want me to –“ 

“No. I’m going to have to start paying you if you do anything else for me,” she quipped. She couldn’t remember where the blasted light bulbs were or if there were any. They might have been in the closet with the fuse box. She moved toward the doorway and Alec intercepted her. 

“I can do it,” she insisted. 

“I’m taller,” he argued and demonstrated this fact by towering over her. The harsh kitchen light wasn’t any kinder to him than the sunlight of that morning or the shadows of his hotel room, but there was something about the way that he was stubbornly planted in her doorway, willing to have a row with her over changing a bloody light bulb that sent her heart into her throat. She took a step forward. 

Alec stepped with her and somehow managed to fill the doorway with his too thin figure and his arms spread wide. 

“I’m stronger,” she warned him, lifting a hand to his chest and cruelly reminding him of his weakness. Alec flinched and scratched at his shirt as if he could rid himself of that weakness and perhaps her touch as well. 

“I’m trying to help you,” he snapped. 

“I don’t need you to do _everything_ ,” she said, exasperated. 

“Fine.” Surrendering his position, he left the kitchen and the lightbulb to her and went into the sitting room. 

It took her a while to locate the lightbulbs and one that would hopefully fit. She got caught up in the search, not realizing that despite being largely stocked by the landlord it was the one place in the house that had a twin counterpart in the old house she’d shared with Joe for almost fourteen years. It even smelt the same and for a moment it was all too easy for her to forget…

The kitchen was dark and empty when she returned. Of course the light had gone out. Joe was always so lazy about changing bulbs and painting rooms and fixing things that should’ve been fixed a long time ago. It irritated Ellie especially since it had gotten worse after Fred had been born even though he’d been _home_ –

“ _Shit_!” 

Ellie tripped over something in the dark, stubbing her toe. Strong arms grabbed her from behind, so suddenly that her heart slammed against her rib cage and she almost dropped the bloody lightbulb.

“What the fuck Joe!” 

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she froze as reality came crashing over her like a wave. She felt those arms tighten around her until it was almost painful to breathe. Or perhaps his arms had nothing to do with her inability to breathe and those cold fingers curling around her lungs. She choked on her own rising bile and gagged.

“I’m not Joe,” Alec whispered against her cheek, his Scottish accent was so sharp that it was impossible to mistake him for anyone else. “Ellie, I’m not _him_.” 

Ellie gasped and clawed at Alec’s arms until he loosened his grasp enough for her to break free. She was wrong, Alec could be strong when he needed to be. She stumbled without him to steady her and clutched at her churning stomach. The heap of boxes loomed in front of her, a symbol of everything Joe had taken from her. He’d taken her heart, her trust, and her _home_. He’d turned all of her friends against her, people she’d known her whole life, and he was driving her out of a place she loved and that was so much a part of who she was that she didn’t know who she would be without it. The sight of Danny’s body and Beth screaming on the beach flashed through her mind, followed by Tom crying in the hotel room after she told him the truth about his father, and then she saw that forbidden book she’d found yesterday with the horrifying photographs of that poor child with her husband tucked inside at the very end of the story. Inexplicably, the memory of Alec’s wide frightened eyes in his terrifyingly white face joined the nightmarish montage as she recalled that night in the boatyard when the search for their elusive killer, her own fucking husband, had ended with him having a bloody heart attack. If only she’d seen what was going on under her own roof, she could’ve prevented all of it. The familiar guilt wrapped her up in a stranglehold, but Alec’s cool hand on her back eased the pain and the tightness in her chest and stomach. 

“Ellie, breathe,” he instructed her as she bent over the sink. “ _Breathe_.” She coughed until she could and with her first breath, she spat. 

“I _hate_ him. I HATE HIM!” 

She slammed her palm down on the countertop and let go of that guilt in favor of her rage against the man that she’d loved for so long. Her heart still hurt, even after all this time, from that betrayal and that discovery that she had been loving someone that hadn’t existed at all. Joe Miller, her beloved husband and father of her two children wasn’t real, not like the broken man that held her with a strength that he wasn’t even aware that he possessed. 

“Let go,” he whispered and she did. Ellie closed her eyes and slowly sunk into his embrace like a warm bath after an exhausting day. He pried the forgotten lightbulb from her taut fingers and placed it on the counter behind him. The anger ebbed away as Alec pulled her close. “I’ve got you,” he murmured and her hand slipped from the sink basin to clutch at his wiry arm. “I’m right here, Ellie.” He repeated the words over and over again and accompanied by her name it was almost like a prayer to a god neither of them were quite sure they believed in. 

“Tell me you’re always going to be here,” Ellie pleaded weakly when she found her voice again. “Tell me you’re not going to abandon –“

“I am not Joe,” he growled, his Scottish accent so thick that she could hardly understand him, but his anger was palpable. His arms tightened around her, pressing her closer to his racing heart. 

“You’re upset with me?” Upset was an understatement, he was furious. 

“Not with you,” he soothed her, but he was shaking. Her mind raced through the endless possibilities of reasons why he was cross with her and there were so many that she didn’t even know where to start. 

“I called you Joe,” she realized. He blew out a breath that stirred her curls and then started speaking so rapidly that she almost couldn’t follow him.

“You’ve done that before, in your sleep, tried to kiss me too, but you were with that ungrateful bastard for fourteen years so it’s understandable that you would slip up from time to time and have the occasional dream. Falling out of love and breaking that habit isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight –“ 

“I’m not in love with him anymore,” Ellie cut him off. 

“I don’t know what you’re feeling, Miller, but it’s going to take time, a lot of time, and I’m not sure if –“

“Don’t you dare say that I’m not ready!” Ellie interrupted him again, shoving him away from her. “It’s been nearly nine months since Joe confessed and left me in shock and struggling to figure out what the hell I did wrong, when I should have seen it, and why I didn’t see it.” 

“You couldnae have seen _that_!” he insisted, Scottish ire still coloring and collapsing his words. “Miller, this isn’t your fault!”

“I know that now!” she snarled back at him and his eyes widened a fraction. “Most days, I understand that it’s not my fault, not entirely,” she amended and gazed down at her white hand on the counter. 

“You forgave yourself?” Alec asked thickly and some of the fury seemed to leave him. 

“I’m not sure I would go that far…” Ellie bit down on her lip and then drew in a deep breath. “But I think I’m getting there. You probably think I’m mad, I can barely handle changing a light bulb or looking at a cardboard box without thinking about him and then yesterday with that – that book –“ She broke off as Alec suddenly caught her by the arm and dragged her back into the warmth of his embrace. She tried not to listen to his erratic heart or measure the way his chest rose and fell so rapidly beneath her. 

“I think I could’ve killed him if he wasn’t already locked away in prison,” his low voice rumbled through her, sending a shiver all the way down to her toes. He wasn’t the only one, a small voice whispered in the darkest part of her mind. 

“You’re sure he’s not getting out?” 

“Certain,” Alec confirmed. It was just one word but there was a dangerous undertone and a firm assurance that hadn’t been present the last time he’d offered her that same answer under very different circumstances. She knew him better now, or at least she thought she did. He pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead, a habit she was enjoying. “I can promise you that, Ellie.”

Alec released her and reached around her for the lightbulb. The ceiling was low in the kitchen and Alec didn’t need a chair to screw in the bulb. He fumbled in the dark but the moonlight and the light from the hall allowed him to complete the task with those long fingers that Ellie knew by now weren’t just for pushing pencils behind a desk. The bulb hummed as it instantly came to life, filling the kitchen with a warmer, softer light. He adjusted it until the sound stopped and the light burned brighter. 

“Better?” he asked, blinking at her. 

Ellie nodded and was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. 

“Thank you,” she said, slowly approaching him.

“Don’t thank me,” Alec said so harshly that it halted her just a step shy of him. Sighing, he placed one hand on the table beside him and rubbed his eyes with the other. “Ellie, I haven’t done anything.”

“Don’t be daft; you’re helping me pack up the house, you went with me to look at houses, you paid nearly every time we went out, you kept my kids alive and cooked for them on more than one occasion, you listened to me rant and rave and babble, you comforted me and you –“ she almost choked on the four letter word that came out of nowhere, because he hadn’t even admitted out loud that he _cared_ about her. But when he looked at her now there was something about the way his eyes followed her that made her wonder if maybe… She shoved the word aside (it scared the hell out of her) and covered his hand on the table with her own. 

“You’re _always_ there for me and the boys,” she told him.

“Someone should be, after that fucking –“ He shut his mouth and looked straight into the light. Apparently she wasn’t the only one that couldn’t find a colorful enough swear word to adequately describe the murderer she’d been married to. Ellie was so sick and tired of talking and _not_ talking about that monster. All she wanted to do was move on. 

“You deserved better,” Alec said at last and twisted the hand beneath hers so that his fingers curved around her wrist. “You _deserve_ better than this...” He gently turned her wrist over so that she was forced to look at those bruises he left last night when she thought he was going to die on her _again_. They looked worse now, a different color entirely under this brand new light and with the passage of several more hours. Ellie had to look away for a moment before she was able to face him. 

“All I wanted was to make sure that you and the boys were going to be okay. I wanted to take care of you, of all of you…” Alec’s voice broke up and their eyes met. Deep within those fathomless brown eyes, Ellie saw a lot of the things that he couldn’t say to her and probably wouldn’t ever say to her. And that was alright, because Ellie wasn’t sure she was ready to hear any of that or if she even wanted to hear it. He swallowed hard and Ellie leaned in to kiss him before he could say anything else. He didn’t respond other than to slide his arm up under her bruised wrist to grasp at her waist. When she pulled back, his eyes were closed and his fingers were hanging onto her belt loop.

“I can’t take care of you, not the way I want to – not the way you deserve -” he stammered, opening his eyes slowly. 

“Alec, stop talking,” Ellie ordered. “I’m not asking you to take care of me.” A shadow crossed his eyes and all those things Ellie thought she saw were shuttered up behind a mask he wore all too well. She took a deep breath. “I can – I can take care of myself now,” she declared. 

Alec stood there and searched her face for a long moment. He lifted his free hand and clumsily smoothed back her hair from her forehead. A slow almost sad smile spread across his face and damn it, Ellie wished he would smile more often, even if there was something heartbreaking in his dark eyes.

“I know,” he agreed. “I’ve been waiting nine bloody months for you to figure that out.” 

Ellie smiled. Alec curled his fingers in her hair and tilted her head up to meet his in a kiss that was so soft that it was almost painful because it left her longing for so much more. She pushed up on her toes but Alec quickly turned his face away and dragged her head down to his chest. He rested his chin atop her hair and held her close. Ellie thought she tasted salt on her lips, but it wasn’t until later that she would realize Alec had been crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Constructive criticism or a “hello” or a “I hate your guts Hazel” are always much appreciated! Sorry it was so sad, but we’re moving forward, I promise.


	19. Clear Skies and Fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote parts of this and the previous chapter back in January before Season 2. Obviously a lot has happened in the story since then, but I was reluctant to cut out the core of this scene. Thank you so much for letting me know that you’re still reading and to mykelara/nannyogg for explaining it all to me and taking me seriously even after reading the crack version of this chapter ages ago!
> 
> And to SEA, I miss you, especially today…

Alec slipped outside and sat down on the front stoop. He rested his forearms on his knees and watched the moon rise in that wide open sky before him. The cooler air helped him breathe even if the openness of this place did little to relieve the pressure in his head and on his shoulders. He had until the morning before he had to face the reality that had left him another two texts in the hour that had ensued since the last phone call, and he’d be damned if he let any other ghosts from their past or his health issues ruin it for them. Putting his phone away, he tracked the moon’s slow but steady ascent and somehow that calmed him. His eyes were dry again by the time Ellie joined him. 

“Nice night,” Ellie observed, squeezing onto the step next to him. Over twenty-four hours ago they’d sat in almost the exact same spot, but Ellie’s presence beside him and her head on his shoulder was a subtle reminder of everything that had changed.

“You’ll miss it here,” he stated, once she was settled with his arm around her. 

She nodded and her lips curved into a nostalgic smile as her eyes traveled down a road of happy memories that Alec couldn’t follow her on. Instead of opening up to him, she babbled on auto pilot about what she still had to pack and do before she could call the removers. He gazed at her until she abruptly stopped chattering and looked up at him. Her face was bathed in the softness of the moonlight, but her eyes had that same radiant brightness that had compelled him to kiss her earlier in the hotel room. She was so fucking beautiful, he didn’t know how he’d missed it for so long. 

“Alec, are you even listening to me?” she wondered as he leaned closer and rested his hand on her thigh. She’d changed into jeans earlier, but he’d already discovered on the seawall that it didn’t matter what she was wearing. 

“Aye,” he lied and nuzzled her head. 

“Then you’ll do it?” she asked and held her breath as he kissed her jaw. He hummed some sort of agreement, his hand sliding higher and his lips trailing lower. He had twelve more hours alone with her and he didn’t intend to waste a bloody second of it. 

“You weren’t listening,” she snorted and pinched the inside of his thigh. Alec yelped and Ellie giggled. He cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. 

“I was listening,” he grumbled, although he was finding it hard to stay mad at her when her eyes were sparkling with amusement. 

“So, you’re going to watch Fred for me next week?” she inquired skeptically. 

“Absolutely,” he consented and inched closer to her. She smirked and hooked a finger in between the buttons of his shirt. 

“You’ll take me out to the most expensive restaurant in Broadchurch?” she quipped. 

“Fine.” He rolled his eyes but his heartrate escalated as she tugged him closer. 

“You’ll clean the house?” she asked, grinning. Her nose nudged his and her fingers fiddled with the top button of his shirt. 

“Aye,” he grunted and was rewarded with a quick kiss before she pulled back again to tease him. 

“You’re going to make peace with my sister?” 

“She’ll murder me first,” he sniggered and swept her into his arms before she could escape. “Are you done with the bloody questions or have we established that I _was_ paying attention to you?” he asked huskily as he dipped down to kiss the column of her throat and give her his full _attention_ once more. 

“Oh, so you’re going to get the pacemaker?” she joked, unable to resist one last outlandish jab.

“Not bloody likely,” he scoffed. 

They both froze. 

Alec moved first, slowly lifting his heavy head from the crook of her neck so that he could search her pale face and wide eyes. Clearly, she hadn’t meant to say those words any more than he had, but he knew that they wouldn’t take them back. Sighing, he withdrew his arms from around her and she stiffly turned away from him. 

Alec wanted to get up off those steps and walk away from it all like he’d walked away from Sandbrook, like he’d walked away from Miller in that parking garage months ago in the wake of Joe’s sentencing; but fate had sent him to her doorstep on the eve of one of the worst storms he’d ever seen and somehow they’d wound up here on the front stoop again, facing something that should’ve been dealt with that very first night when they decided for some screwed up reason that they could sleep in the same bed. 

“You’re not even _considering_ the pacemaker?” Ellie asked at last. 

“What’s there to consider?” Alec snapped. “The last doctor said it was unlikely I’d survive the surgery. Perhaps, you’ve forgotten but I can’t forget that as easily.”

“And when was that?” Ellie demanded. They were lucky they were out in the middle of nowhere because their voices were steadily rising in volume and pitch. 

“Six weeks ago we discussed this,” he recalled, because it was the morning after Ellie’s date, the first time he wanted to snog her, but Fred had interrupted them. He probably should’ve taken that as a sign of what was to come, but he could barely resist that urge then and he certainly wasn’t making any effort to rein it in now. “That was the last time you were pestering me about getting the bloody procedure, but I told you in the hospital after your fucking ex-husband sent me into cardiac arrest –“

“When was the last time you saw a doctor?” she cut him off. 

“Seriously, Miller, you want to do this right now?” He shot to his feet so fast that he missed a step and had to steady himself on the railing. Ellie stood up, a step above him now, and they were suddenly on eye level. 

“Just answer the bloody question!” 

“What difference will it make?” 

“Answer me.” Alec shook his head and started down the steps. “ _Alec_!” 

Ellie’s voice reached him as his shoes hit the gravel. It was the way she clung to his name that made him turn back. Her mouth was a hard line, but her eyes held the same flash of vulnerability that Alec had heard in her soft plea as she begged him not to leave her in the kitchen. Alec had climbed those three steps and had dragged her inside the house with him before he was even aware of what her just saying his name did to him. 

“What do you want from me, Miller?” he growled as soon as the screen door slammed shut behind her. 

“I want you to tell me the bloody truth!” Ellie demanded and crossed her arms over her chest. Alec reached for his coat, almost knocking the coat rack over. Ellie moved between him and the door, but Alec’s shaking hands as he frantically searched the coat’s pockets were enough indication that he wasn’t in any shape to outrun her. 

“It’s been months, alright?” he admitted, seizing upon the plastic and tossing aside the coat. “I was forced to see another doctor after Joe confessed and they told me the same thing that everyone else did; get the pacemaker or die, but get the pacemaker and you’ll probably die anyway. I had a choice to consider then and I made one.” He extracted two of the pills and swallowed them dry. “That was in November and I - I didn’t show up for the appointment.” 

“Why the hell didn’t you?” Ellie was horrified. 

“Because I came down here looking for _you_!” Alec shouted and threw the balled up plastic at his coat. “I was worried about you and the boys. I thought the press would come after you and I wanted to protect you. I knew that I couldn’t but I – “ he broke off and looked at her. Ellie’s eyes were downcast. He sighed and folded his arms over his chest. “Sorry, it was my fault.”

“Alec.” She faltered and for the first time he felt compelled to fill that silence, to let it all out in a rush, to let go of all of it. 

“I went to your sister’s, tried to bully her into giving up your whereabouts but I nearly passed out on her doorstep, did she tell you that?” Alec asked her and Ellie’s eyes widened. “It was stupid but I couldn’t get you out of my head. I needed to see you. I wanted to apologize and tell you that – “ He stopped and shrugged. 

“Is that why she hates you?” Ellie wondered, breaking the silence at last. 

“Probably.”

“That’s no excuse for avoiding the doctor.”

“I thought I could manage it, at least until…” He cleared his throat. “Sandbrook fell apart and I wanted to be certain that I could close this one case; that Joe would stay behind bars, that the Latimers would get the justice that they deserved, and that you and the boys would move on from all this and be alright.” Her eyes were too much for him to handle. His gaze traveled down the hall and back to that first night, when Tom had reluctantly let him inside the house and gradually let him get past the fortress that Ellie and him had set up in the wake of the horror that was the aftermath of the case. He’d snuck into their _home_ in the same manner that they’d stolen into his _heart_. 

“From the moment I walked in here...” He ran his tongue over his teeth and shook his head as he cycled through a series of memories he had of this house. “It was so long since I’d been invited into anyone’s home –“

“You weren’t invited. You broke in,” Ellie snidely reminded him and Alec snorted.

“You’ll never let me live that down, but I don’t regret it. I’m glad I got to know you and Fred and Tom better. For a few months, I wasn’t just _existing_ , and I could almost fool myself into thinking that this thing was manageable.”

“And now you’re getting worse again…” It wasn’t a question. She uncrossed one arm and rested her hand on his chest. He was familiar with her touch by now, but the way her fingers traced over that spot as if she could heal that ailing organ if only she could break through all those layers of cloth, skin and tissue, took his breath away. He shut his eyes as her other hand lifted to his face.

“Oh, Alec,” she breathed as he leaned into her touch, “You can’t live like this.”

“I know,” he admitted and reached for the hand on his chest. He pressed her fingers there and was reminded of that morning in the kitchen when he felt a flicker of hope for the first time in ages, and he promised not to let her down. Alec felt that same strength seeping out of him as a frightening reality crept in to take its place. “Ellie, I don’t know how much longer – “

“Stop,” Ellie hissed out through gritted teeth and threw all of her weight on him. He staggered back into the wall, barely keeping them on their feet. 

“Sorry,” he apologized, his whole body trembling.

“ _Stop it_.”

“I am so sorry, Ellie.” He looked at her and Ellie’s face crumbled. They were back in that interrogation room again and Alec was breaking her. 

“No.” She shook her head but he kept going, forcing out the cold hard facts that he’d been carrying around with him for so long. 

“I’m not getting any better. Without that pacemaker they didn’t expect -”

“Then get the pacemaker!”

“The chances of me making it off the table –“

“I’ll take my chances!” Ellie snarled. “I would take that chance, instead of living like _this_. You can’t even get through a bleeding discussion without those pills.” Breaking away from him, she picked up his coat and threw it at him. He caught it against his chest, shocked. She started toward the kitchen and he reached for her, spinning her back around to face him. 

“What the fuck do you want from me?” he demanded again. 

“I want _you_!” Her eyes darkened as they both registered her choice of words and his reaction. Alec dropped his coat and used his grasp on her wrist as leverage to pull her flush against him. Their mouths met in a heated kiss. Suddenly, Alec didn’t give a shit about his heart condition or his limitations that he hadn’t even thought about exploring until he came to Broadchurch. He wasn’t the only one that had lost all sense of direction. She was driving him backwards, tripping over his coat, and pushing him toward the doorway. Alec stepped on the pill packet and the coat rack crashed to the floor. 

Ellie swore and Alec tried to hold onto her and that illusion for a little bit longer. 

“Leave it,” he told her.

“I can’t just leave it!” Ellie shot back and Alec was aware that they weren’t talking about a stupid coat rack anymore. She spotted the pill packet and Alec stepped on it, heedless of the last two pills in the plastic that were crushed beneath his shoe. He was so done with this, all of this. 

“Give me one night, Ellie, _please_.” He was begging her. “We can talk in the morning.” 

“I can’t, Alec, I can’t,” she gasped as he nipped at her throat, silently pleading with her to drop it. “ _Alec_!” His name was almost a moan, expressing her indecision, but he knew she was right. Sighing, he raised his head and soothed the glaring red blemish on her skin with a rub of his thumb. Their foreheads met as they both struggled to catch their breath. 

“Alec, we can’t do this,” Ellie panted. Alec’s eyes flew open as something belatedly occurred to him. 

“When I said one night,” he stammered, “I didn’t mean that – I didn’t come here for a shag – Not that I’m not – _fuck_ –“

Ellie pressed a soft kiss to his lips, shutting him up. “I know, Alec,” she murmured, stroking the nape of his neck. Hell, he would’ve been content simply listening to her breathe for one more night, but he couldn’t put that into words. Ellie understood. She always did. 

“I want you, but I want you to _live_.”

“Ellie,” he sighed, rocking back on his heels. 

“I want you to go see the doctor,” she urged him. “I want you to get that bloody pacemaker that we both know that you _need_.” 

“You think that that’s going to make me better? You think that if I see a doctor it’s going to fix everything?” He scanned her face. “What if they tell me something that you don’t want to hear?”

“Alec, it’s okay to be scared,” she reassured him, reaching for him, but Alec stepped beyond her. 

“I had nothing to be scared of until I walked into this house.” He thrust his shaking fingers violently through his hair, causing it to stick up in all directions. Balling his hands into fists, he fought to hide the fearful tremor. “God, Ellie, do you have any fucking idea what you’re asking of me?”

Ellie’s eyes softened as she looked at him. Six weeks ago, he had told her that the last doctor hadn’t been able to offer him anything but the likelihood that he would die on the table. Alec was terrified that he would get the same prognosis and there was absolutely nothing that she or anyone else could do. It was entirely out of her control, but the spark in her eyes hinted that she couldn’t accept that, not yet. 

“You can’t honestly expect me to sit back and watch you die,” she said and that spark caught fire. 

“Trust me,” Alec snorted. “The last thing I want is you at my death bed telling me to get the fuck up or you’ll kill me yourself.” 

Ellie punched him in the arm with all her might. He flinched. It hurt like hell. 

“You know I’m right,” he said through gritted teeth, grasping her wrists so she couldn’t try it again. She glared at him and leaned as close to him as he would allow. 

“And you should know by now that I can pester you until you wish you were dead if you don’t do what I want and go see the doctor again.” 

She hadn’t won but they had reached a stalemate. 

“I’m not giving up,” she warned him. “And I’m going to make sure that you don’t either.” Wrenching her wrists free from him, she pushed past him and out the door. 

*

Alec gave her fifteen minutes to curse him and think of all the ways she could make his life a living hell before he grabbed his coat and went after her. He had calmed down and he hoped to god that Ellie had cooled off. She seemed intent on doing whatever was necessary to preserve his life but Alec didn’t want to push his luck.

After nearly a half hour of searching, he found her as always in the last place he would’ve looked. She was on that bloody bench where the whole thing started. Alec had never been so grateful that Broadchurch was so small. He sat down beside her and Ellie barely blinked. 

Alec needed a minute to catch his breath. Leaning back, he stretched out his arm across the top of the bench and looked at the woman beside him. She was so different from the woman that had sat here almost nine months ago, and yet just like that night she was completely oblivious to him. Alec felt like an outsider, as if he was intruding on something private, and yet, just like the last time he pushed the boundaries and bridged the gap between them. He slid over until their shoulders brushed and they both jumped.

“Oh, it’s you,” she sighed in relief or disappointment, but Alec was too preoccupied wrapping his arms around her to care. 

“Jesus, Miller, you’re freezing! How long have you been out here without a coat?” he demanded as she stopped trying to push him away.

“I don’t know.” Ellie shrugged and glanced over their shoulders at the beach beyond. Alec started to remove his coat and she rolled her eyes. “It’s unseasonably warm, Alec, but it’s not that warm.” Alec stripped off the coat and tossed it at her. 

“Put it on,” he ordered and sat back down on the bench, muttering about the stupidity of the people that lived here. Ellie was still staring at the coat. 

“Oh, for god’s sake!” Alec exclaimed. Crouching down in front of her, he fussed over her as if she were a child. “You had no problem stealing my coat and scarf in the past, so I know that you know how to wear them. I hope you don’t plan on making this a habit, though, because one of us is going to wind up with hypothermia–” He stopped in mid-speech because Ellie surged forward and kissed him. 

“What was that for?” he asked, blinking as she drew back from him. 

“You gave me your coat,” she said with a laugh that sounded forced. “Alec, there was a time when you wouldn’t even make me a cup of tea. I thought you were such an arse and now – “ Her voice cracked and she buried her face in her hands. Alec got up and sat down on the bench beside her. Her shoulders shook and Alec wasn’t sure if she was laughing at him or crying. He reached for her anyway. 

“God, I was so wrong about you,” she whispered and burrowed her face into his chest. Now, Alec knew that she was crying, but as he pulled her into his arms he tried to pretend that he didn’t. 

“I was wrong about you too,” Alec admitted. “I thought for sure that you hated me.”

“I do hate you,” Ellie responded, smacking him. “It was so much easier when you were a fucking knob-” she broke off, swallowing a sob.

“I can rectify that,” Alec offered generously. “I’ll stop making tea for you.” Ellie hit him again and he caught her against his chest. He held her close and rested his chin on top of her head. Rubbing her back, Alec chuckled as he realized that once again Ellie Miller was wearing his coat. 

“What’s so funny?” Ellie sniffled. 

“Nothing,” Alec whispered and kissed the top of her head. He nuzzled her neck, breathing in the combined scent of his coat and her. Tomorrow his coat would smell like her. At least he could take that with him, as long as Ellie didn’t plan on taking that from him too. Alec didn’t know how much more he could give her. 

“Promise me you’ll go see the doctor,” Ellie begged him.

“And if I don’t…” he began, testing her. 

Ellie grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked him down so hard that Alec couldn’t breathe. 

“If you don’t go, and trust me I’ll know if you don’t, I will call 999 and _force_ you into that ambulance. And then I will strap you onto the stretcher and wheel you into the hospital and straight into that surgery myself, if it’s necessary. Is that understood?”

Alec nodded weakly and Ellie released him. Her hands moved to his coat and suddenly she was emptying his pockets. 

“What are you doing now?” he asked, exasperated. 

“Where’s your phone?”

Alec dragged her closer and slid his hand inside the coat. Ellie’s eyebrows shot up and he rolled his eyes. 

“Relax, Miller, I’ve got it here.” He held up the phone for her to see. 

“Good. Call the doctor.”

“What? _Now_?” 

“Yes, _now_ ,” she mimicked him. “You can leave a bloody voicemail. I’m sure you’re familiar with those…” Her eyes were piercing and Alec suspected that she may have gotten a peek at his phone earlier when Dr. Martin Baxter wouldn’t stop calling him. 

Alec gave a long suffering sigh, but he could still feel the chafing on his skin from where Ellie had gotten her claws into his shirt in order to make her case.

“Can I at least have _some_ privacy?” he asked her and stood up, motioning to the empty road beyond. It wasn’t that late but it was deserted. Ellie nodded but her eyes followed him, boring holes into his back. She’d know, he was certain of it, if he pretended or called someone other than his doctor. 

His thumb hovered over his daughter’s name, as always, but Alec scrolled further down until he found the contact of the very last person he felt like seeing or speaking to right now. 

“ _Alec_?”

“When’s the earliest you can get me in for an appointment?” Alec hissed, keeping his voice low. Martin sighed into the phone. 

“ _You’re_ astonishing. _You walked out of the waiting room back in November to go chasing down some broad in Dorset_ –“

“I was closing a case!” 

“ _Don’t give me that, Alec. I had my secretary leave you dozens of messages since then and I know there has to be a bloody woman involved in there somewhere. You can’t just make the same mistake twice, and yet you’re still Auntie Iris’s_ darling –“

“For fuck’s sake, _Marty_ , I didn’t have the affair, Vicky did!”

On the other end of the line, Alec heard something crash. Alec hoped it was expensive. 

“ _Are you shitting me?_ ”

“Look, just get me an appointment.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, already regretting the slip of his tongue and temper. 

“ _You took the fall for that bitch!? I bet it was Andre the giant, your co-worker. Am I right? Christ, you’re even stupider than I remember. I told you eight years ago what I thought was going on and you gave me a black eye and wouldn’t talk to me for years_ –“

“You were hammered and walked into a car door –“ But Martin wasn’t listening. 

“ _All this horseshit about penance and how Keira would be better off with your ex and Iris, and the whole time you’re lying and killing yourself_ –“

“Can you get me an appointment or not?” Alec snapped, his patience wearing thin. Martin Baxter was the last person he wanted to deal with right now. 

“ _Have you told Iris? Oh, shite, you have that’s why she’s been calling me_ -”

“Yes, you bloody idiot, now get me an appointment –“

“ _Hang on, lemme see, next week I’ve got_ -” 

“Do you want another six phone calls from Iris?” Alec growled. 

“ _On second thought, I’ve got an opening Monday morning first thing. Or we can make it for Wednesday and I’ll even come down to fetch you myself and drop you off at Iris’s so you can deal with her because I’m assuming that you’re still hiding in Broadchurch with that woman_ –“ 

“For the last time, Marty, there wasn’t a woman –“

“ _There is now_.” 

Alec paused for too long, glancing over his shoulder at Ellie. Their eyes met and Ellie smiled. 

“What makes you say that?” Alec wondered. He gave Ellie a small wave and walked further up the road. 

“ _You wouldn’t be coming in if there wasn’t_.”

“Marty, there’s been an increase in my symptoms –“

“ _No shit. I’m shocked you made it this far. Whoever she is, she must’ve given you_ something _to live for after you pushed Iris and your own daughter away_ -”

“I didn’t –“

“ _Iris is a wreck, Alec. When she finds out that I knew this whole time about your arrhythmia and your heart attack_ -“

“I’ll take the blame, don’t worry, I’m good at that,” Alec interrupted bitterly. “And don’t tell anyone about that or Vicky’s affair, I don’t want Keira to find out.”

“ _Fine, but I’m coming down on Wednesday and I expect to get a good look at this bonny lass_ –“

Alec hung up on him. He walked back to the bench where he’d left Ellie. She had gotten up and walked over to the seawall, overlooking the beach and the ocean. There was a bonfire in the distance and the smell of the smoke was thick in the air as the sea breeze that had been mysteriously absent earlier, returned to bring all those memories with it. Even the air here was tainted, but some of the memories he had now weren’t as sad as he remembered.

He reached for her hand and once again she startled. He wondered what she was thinking about, but as her fingers wound through his, he found that it didn’t matter. 

“I’ll go see the doctor on Wednesday,” he informed her.

“And you’ll get the pacemaker?”

“Is that what you want?” Alec asked, looking down at their interlaced fingers. “They weren’t very optimistic…”

“You’re miserable and you’re in a lot of pain, Alec.”

“Not when I’m with you,” he argued. 

“You’re so full of shit,” Ellie laughed and Alec smirked, mollifying: “Well, not _all_ the time.” Ellie dropped her chin to his shoulder and Alec brought their joined hands to his lips. 

“You’re all I have left,” he confessed.

“That’s not true.”

Alec looked at her and she didn’t dare mention Iris or the daughter that hated him that he gave up everything for. She tugged on their hands and tenderly kissed his bruised knuckles and the evidence of how much it hurt him to lose that life and family he once had.

“She would’ve wanted you to get the pacemaker. She wouldn’t want you to live like this. She’d want you to take the risk…” Alec sucked in a sharp breath and Ellie faltered.

“Are _you_ sure?” he asked her. Ellie couldn’t fight the compulsion to smooth his hair back from his forehead and brush a kiss there. 

“I’m not going to watch you die,” she reassured him. 

“You might not have a choice,” he said dryly.

“I’ll talk to the surgeon myself,” Ellie threatened. “I’ll make sure that he or she knows who they’re dealing with.” 

“God help the poor sod that gets stuck with the job,” he wheezed a laugh. 

“So, you’ll do it?” Ellie asked hopefully. 

“Aye,” he agreed.

Ellie flung her arm around his neck and gave him a kiss that left him breathless and his head spinning. Alec opened his eyes into hers and she grinned. He framed her face between his hands and the world stopped. 

“If I’d known you were going to do that I would’ve seen the doctor months ago,” he teased her. 

“ _Unbelievable_.” Ellie smacked him cross the chest and Alec chuckled. Catching her hand in his, he spread his fingers and lined his palm up with hers. She slotted her smaller fingers between his and he snuck his other arm inside his coat and round her waist. He turned to kiss the wrist of their entwined hands and Ellie let go of his hand to wrap both of her arms around him.

“Thank you,” she whispered and pecked him on the cheek. 

Alec closed his eyes, relishing the softness and heat of her body against his and that warmth blossoming in his chest as he dared again to _hope_. He could have stayed like that forever but they still had a long way to go and time was always passing… Ellie stepped back from him and Alec was struck again by how far she’d come from that lost and broken woman that had stood with him on that same spot almost nine months ago. His coat was too long and loose fitting on her and the skin around her eyes was puffy and pink from the tears she shed earlier, but the grin she gave him was dazzling. 

“Come along, Hardy,” she said. 

He took Ellie Richardson’s hand and this time _she_ led them away from that bench.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

Ellie shrugged, confident that he’d follow, because somehow she’d figured out what he’d never been able to tell her. He’d follow her to hell and back again if she needed him to. 

*

They stood together in the shadow of the cliff. Under the cover of darkness, they were just another nameless couple sneaking off for some privacy or enjoying the unusually warm night. The sounds of laughter and the occasional shriek or yell reached them as if from a long way off. Someone struck up the chorus of an old Irish drinking song until it petered out in giggles when it became evident that no one remembered the words to the rest of it. The bonfire flared up and smoked, burning brighter as more wood was added. 

“I bet Lucy brought Tom and Fred,” Ellie said suddenly.

Alec looked at her and then back at the throng of people gathered around the bonfire on the beach. Half the god damn town must’ve been down there. He remembered the last time they’d watched them flock to the bonfires to stand with the Latimers. They’d been outsiders then, ostracized outcasts that had no right to witness that event let alone be a part of it. Alec wondered what would happen if Ellie tried to join them now, months later. Chloe had forgiven her but could the rest of them?

“Do you want to go down there?” he asked hesitantly, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do. But he’d do it for her. 

Ellie watched them with a longing and a wistfulness that Alec understood all too well. But after several minutes of silence, she shook her head. 

“Not right now,” Ellie said and caught at his sleeve. “Let’s walk a little further…”

Slowly, they kept going until the beach curved and the bonfire was half hidden behind the cliffs that loomed at their backs. The voices faded into the distance as they left the rest of the town behind. Alec stole another glance at his silent companion and caught her staring at him. Ellie shyly smiled at him and Alec forgot to watch where he was going and tripped over a piece of driftwood. He swore and Ellie laughed at him. Her laughter lingered in the form of an echo and a soft smile as she held out her hands to help him up.

He grabbed her hands and accidentally tugged her down on top of him. She squealed as she landed half on him and half in the sand. 

“ _Wanker_!” Scrambling off of him, she lobbed a handful of sand at him and Alec laughed. His laughter sounded almost foreign to him, eerily ringing out over the cliffs, but perhaps it was because it had been so long since he had laughed. He hadn’t laughed like that since Ellie’s birthday, when they pretended for a moment that they were just another married couple in a restaurant, celebrating an anniversary that wasn’t tainted by tragedy or heartbreak or lies. Ellie laughed with him, eyes shining and sides shaking, until she was wiping tears from her eyes and Alec was struggling to catch his breath.

“You fucking prick, now I’ve got sand everywhere,” she complained, playfully smacking him.

“Sorry,” he wheezed but he wasn’t. She was covered in sand, but her eyes were still bright with mirth, and she couldn’t suppress the smile that curled her mouth no matter how hard she tried. She was _happy_ and the sight took his breath away.

“What?” Ellie asked, observing the change in his face. 

Alec leaned over and kissed her. 

Somewhere in the distance a firework exploded in a spectacular array of colors and sparkles. 

“Bloody idiots,” Alec mumbled against her lips. “I’ll bet you twenty quid that someone lights themselves on fire –“

“Shut up and kiss me.” 

“Fine.”

Their hands and clothes were gritty and salty, and there was entirely too much sand between them and around them. But Ellie giggled as she opened her mouth beneath his and Alec swore he tasted happiness. 

*

Everyone in Broadchurch remembers that weekend for the memorable firework display. Ellie Richardson doesn’t remember seeing a single firework except for the ones that were reflected in Alec Hardy’s dark eyes when he kissed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it to the fireworks mentioned in the beginning of Ch. 14! I wrote pieces of Alec and Ellie’s surgery conversation/bench scene in January, and the firework scene in July when some drunken bloody idiot was setting them off in the street. This chapter was a jigsaw puzzle that got a bit out of hand but I really did enjoy writing it. Anyways, today’s a hard day for me, so I’m selfishly hoping that I brought a smile to your face or a scowl worthy of Alec Hardy, and I want you to tell me how much you hate me or how crazy you think I am or and more importantly, today I want you to _LIVE_. Give someone a hug, do something you’re scared of, just do _something_ today. And if you want to tell me about that too, I’d love to hear it. Thanks again!


	20. After the Sandstorm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve withheld this chapter for weeks and put off reading and reviewing all the other brilliant fanfics in this fandom because I wanted to finish this story. I’m not quite done yet but I’m getting closer. I don’t know how long it will wind up being, or how long it will take me to edit and post the chapters I already have written but I want to thank nannyogg/mykelara for putting up with me and all of you that PMd/reviewed/commented/left kudos for being patient!
> 
> Just a reminder that I started this two years ago and have a lot of OC’s in this story. Keira is Alec’s daughter, Vicky is his ex-wife, and Cooper is the DS she cheated on Alec with. Geoffrey was Ellie’s sort of boyfriend, Iris is a maternal figure for Alec, and Martin Baxter is Iris’s nephew and Alec’s doctor. Also there is a DI Worthington that is mentioned very, very briefly at the start of 14 when Alec arrives at Ellie’s and at the end of 17 when Alec punches Cooper. She worked with Alec/Vicky/Cooper in the past and called Alec and Cooper in to look at a case because of its similarity to the Sandbrook case, accidentally telling Cooper that Alec was ill because she witnessed one of his attacks. Hopefully that helps!

Ellie woke up with sand in her bed and in between the sheets. There was sand in her hair and sand in her clothes and probably in other places that she didn’t even want to think about right now. Alec stirred, coughing beside her. 

“Are you okay?” Suddenly, she was wide awake. 

He nodded and knocked back two pills and half a glass of water before he started choking again. 

“Nightmare?” Ellie asked, rubbing her hand over his arm. 

“Nah,” he gasped, painstakingly sitting up against the headboard. He closed his eyes, groaning, “Think I’ve got sand in my lungs.” 

“And who’s fault is that?” she teased, poking his side. Alec grimaced as if it hurt but Ellie wasn’t stupid. He had his hands and the glass carefully balanced on his chest, nowhere near where she’d touched him. Another fit of coughing shuddered though him and Ellie panicked. 

“You’re not fine.” Alec shook his head. She scrambled to sit up and Alec’s hand shot out to stay her. His fingers interlaced with hers and he hauled their joined hands onto his chest. Ellie wasn’t sure how that added weight could possibly help, but a minute later he stopped coughing, polished off the glass, and set it down on the nightstand. 

“Did I wake you?” he asked her hoarsely. His eyes were heavy-lidded with sleep. Ellie nodded. Her heart was racing faster than his and she wasn’t completely convinced that he was alright. “It’s always worse in the morning,” he apologized. 

He lay back on the bed and let go of her hand to coax her to lie down beside him. She pillowed her head on his chest, listening for his slowing heartbeat. Alec’s fingernails pleasantly scratched over her scalp and his fingers combed through her snarled curls. Ellie winced when his finger got caught in one and Alec brushed an apologetic kiss over her crown. 

He coughed again and Ellie lifted her head to find his face weirdly scrunched up.

“You’ve got sand in your hair,” he explained and stuck the tip of his tongue out. He licked his fingers and gave her an accusatory glare. “Whose idea was it to snog on the beach?”

“Yours,” Ellie reminded him, barely keeping it together. “You kissed me first,” she insisted childishly. Alec made another face as he scratched at his itchy sandy scalp but didn’t argue with her. 

“Yeah, we’re never doing that again,” he told her.

“No sex on the beach?” Ellie pretended to pout as she picked some granules out from under his collar. 

Alec looked as if he might go into cardiac arrest. Ellie lost it and burst out laughing.

“Most people shower afterwards,” she chortled. Alec got up and shucked off his shirt to shake the sand out of it. 

“Speaking from experience, Miller?” he asked with a raised brow, tossing the shirt back at her as he bent down to unzip his bag. 

“No,” she denied it, but as she held onto Alec’s shirt she knew that last night she came pretty damn close to considering it. They’d both been so emotionally and physically drained from the weekend that they’d barely managed the walk home, let alone showering or undressing. Once in a blue moon, Joe would want to do something crazy like that and Ellie usually refused. Now, Ellie wondered if she had been more adventurous would that have stopped her husband from turning into the monster that would abandon his two boys to murder another one with his bare hands. 

“Ellie?” Alec was standing in front of her, clad in his wrinkled slacks and his white undershirt that must’ve shrunk in the wash at some point because it actually fit him. His hair was mussed and he seemed so much younger, standing there in her bedroom with a five o’clock shadow and the first rays of sunlight coming in through the window behind him. She plucked at his shirt and Alec squatted down in front of her.

“Ellie.” 

“What?”

She was afraid to meet his eyes, suddenly insecure before this man that had seen her at her worst and probably already knew who she was thinking about and why. Alec knelt down next to the bed as if he was about to pray, but she could feel the weight of his gaze on her. He folded his arms on the bedspread next to her and waited for her to look at him. 

“You’re going to ruin my only shirt if you keep doing that,” he said at last. She raised her eyes and he was right there, waiting for her. 

“Thought you said you owned more than one shirt.”

“I like this one.” He uncrossed one arm and reached for his shirt. Ellie let go of the button she was worrying and ran her fingers up and over his bruised knuckles that stood out so prominently against his fair skin. His hands were so much longer and thinner than Joe’s. Those elegant hands would never crush a windpipe, but Ellie knew better than anyone else that they weren’t perfect and sometimes they did leave bruises in their wake. 

“What time’s your sister bringing the boys home?” Alec asked softly.

“Not ‘til later, much later…” Her voice dropped. 

Alec swallowed hard and cleared his throat. His fingers nervously tapped the bedspread and his eyes flicked beyond her to the bed. 

“You know, if you’re so hell-bent on having sex on the beach,” he began, leaning toward her, “I’m sure that we carried half of Good Harbour Beach into bed with us,” he said, suggestively. 

Ellie couldn’t help herself, she laughed. Alec slipped away from her and passed his hands over his flushed face. But as soon as their eyes met, his embarrassment gave way to a grin and then finally helpless laughter. 

“Oh, god, that was awful,” he wheezed, biting down on his lip even as his shoulders trembled with laughter. He twisted around so that his back was to the bed but he was sitting closer to her. Ellie shoved his shirt onto the floor and languorously draped her arms around him. He reached up to catch one of her hands in his and pressed a quick kiss to her palm. 

“Sorry, it’s been years since…” he trailed off and Ellie felt the heat of his blush.

“There hasn’t been anyone since Vicky?” she wondered aloud. 

“No.” Alec’s blush intensified and Ellie found it surprising and endearing. A couple of her co-workers had _noticed_ DI Hardy, although she hadn’t paid much attention to the occasional glances and smiles he got from other women (that usually evaporated as soon as they discovered that he was a grump and couldn’t carry a conversation). It wasn’t until the snowy day in the coffee shop and then the encounter with the flirty realtor that Ellie realized that some women were _attracted_ to Alec, and that she was unfortunately amongst them. Her view of Alec and how she felt about him had changed so much since the day they met. 

“I suppose you and your boyfriend Gareth…”

“ _Geoffrey_ ,” she corrected him automatically, “And he wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“Sure seemed like he wanted to be and Lucy-”

“You always got in the way,” she sighed and Alec tilted his head to look at her. Something akin to guilt flitted across his face and he glanced down at his hand resting on his bent knee. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled. 

“No, you’re not,” Ellie murmured against the shell of his ear. Alec’s stuttered breath betrayed him. He shut his eyes as she dragged one of her hands through his hair, scraping her fingernails lightly over his gritty scalp. Alec made a slight sound in his throat that she probably wouldn’t have heard if she hadn’t been so close to him, and she gently tugged his head a little further back.

“You were jealous,” she surmised, smirking. Alec opened his eyes, and although he couldn’t quite focus on her from that angle, Ellie could see the effect she had on him. His eyes were dark. If there was any doubt remaining in her mind that he wasn’t attracted to her, it was stamped out by that silent admission. 

Alec held her eyes for a long moment and then he sat up. Ellie’s hands fell away from him as he snagged his shirt off the floor and slowly and stiffly got to his feet. He stood there for a moment. Then he cocked his head and smirked at her.

“Were you jealous of the realtor?”

Ellie felt the blood rush into her face. He sniggered. She grabbed the shirt and whipped him with it. 

“ _Ow_!” 

“Go take a shower,” she said, shooing him toward the en-suite. “All that sand in your hair must be going to your head.”

“And whose fault is that?” he asked, giving her a significant look. She got up from the bed and was so distracted by him that she tripped over his overnight bag that he’d left right in the middle of the floor. 

“Are you alright?” he asked as she caught herself against the nightstand. She bit back a curse and glared at him and his stupidly messy hair, his stupidly fitted t-shirt, and his stupidly smug face. 

“I hope you slip in the shower!” she grumbled as he ducked into the bathroom. He poked his head out and it sunk in what she’d said. 

“I didn’t mean that-” she stammered, horrified. “Please, don’t slip in the shower.” 

He looked oddly thoughtful as he leaned against the doorjamb and considered her. 

“You know, Miller,” he began seriously, “If you’re that concerned you could supervise me…”

It took her a full thirty seconds before it actually sunk in what kind of _supervision_ he was hoping for. Her expression was enough to start him sniggering again. 

“God, you’re such a knob!”

Alec slammed the door and the alarm clock bounced off of it. Of course the indestructible thing was fine. She set it on the nightstand and watched the time pass for a minute. Then she turned around and eyed the door. Kicking aside his bag, she kept going until her hand was on the doorknob. The water was already running but it couldn’t drown out the sound of Alec coughing or laughing, it was difficult to distinguish the difference. The sound stopped her from entering. She anxiously listened with her ear pressed against the wood until he shut the water off, and Ellie was certain that he wasn’t going to black out and hit his head.

Not today. 

*

They worked straight through the morning and finished by late afternoon, or at least that’s what Ellie told him. Alec suspected that she still had more to do but she could see that _he_ was done. He sat down on the sofa to rest for a minute and fell asleep. Ellie woke him up, tiptoeing out of the sitting room and heading upstairs. The house was dead quiet save for her footsteps. Alec almost missed the noise of the barely tolerable music that Ellie had cranked up on Tom’s miniature speaker thing. At least it would’ve drowned out the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. 

He sat up and nearly upset the glass of water on the coffee table that Ellie had left for him. She’d placed the pills there as well, _just in case_. Alec took them, struggling to get them down past the lump in his throat. His heart calmed after that, but the lump remained there, lodged in his throat as he picked up the water glass and followed the imagined echo of her footsteps until he was once again outside her bedroom. The door wasn’t closed all the way but Alec rapped lightly before entering. 

Ellie was sitting on the bed with a photograph clutched in her hands. Alec placed the empty glass on the nightstand and lowered himself onto the bed beside her. It was the photograph of all of them smiling in Florida, a couple of weeks before Joe committed a murder and she’d meet Alec for the first time over Danny’s body. 

“I should burn it,” Ellie said. Her shoulders were hunched as if she was humiliated he’d caught her in the act. She shouldn’t have been, it hurt seeing her like this but he understood more than anyone else.

“Burning it won’t help,” Alec sighed, looking at her instead of the photograph. He leant forward and gently brushed her curls back from her forehead. “You can’t burn something like that out of your memory, Miller. It’s always going to be _here_ ,” he murmured, touching her temple. 

“I can _try_ ,” she argued stubbornly.

“It won’t work, I’ve tried.” Alec slid his hand behind her head and kissed her temple. “Put it away, Richardson.” He used her maiden name, dragging the word out and rolling the “R’s” over his tongue. He pulled back and Ellie looked up at him in surprise. He’d called her that before, but always in jest and usually in connection to that one time the realtor had mistaken them for a married couple. 

“I don’t mind you calling me Miller,” she confessed as she opened the drawer and dropped the photograph inside. 

“I know,” Alec admitted because she would’ve made him stop a long time ago if she had minded, “But you better get used to the name if you’re going to answer to DS Richardson in a few weeks.” 

Ellie slammed the drawer shut so hard that the glass tipped over. The last drop slithered out, dripping off the edge of the table and dotting the carpet below. Alec cursed himself inwardly for the slip. 

“I didn’t tell anyone that I had an interview, not even Lucy or Tom,” she said calmly, but her eyes were piercing.

“Cooper told me,” he lied smoothly. “He’s got a lot of friends in high places and he’s worked closely with Worthington.” 

Ellie snorted.

“That makes me feel so much better.”

“You’ll get the job,” Alec said, resting his hand on her knee. “DI Worthington’s one of the best and her CS seems like he’s decent at what he does, but I’ve only met him once or twice. If they can’t see your value even after I’ve vouched for you-” He stopped in mid-sentence, realizing he’d said too much. 

“ _Cooper’s_ got friends in high places?” she repeated skeptically, lifting her eyebrows.

“They called me for a reference,” Alec fibbed. He’d given them the reference and threatened to refuse a full disclosure on the Sandbrook case unless they didn’t at least consider Miller for the job. Worthington had a homicide in Edgewood that eerily resembled the Sandbrook case that had nearly destroyed Alec. She had reached out to him and apparently Cooper too, desperately hoping that they could help, especially since her veteran DS had chosen the worst possible time to retire. Alec had honestly been shocked though when Worthington had informed him that _his_ former DS had recently applied for the job. 

“Why’d you apply there?” he blurted out. Ellie blushed and stood to retrieve the empty glass. She walked out of the room and Alec trailed her downstairs and into the kitchen. She turned on the tap to wash out the glass and the other dirty dishes they’d abandoned in the sink that morning. 

“It was closer to you,” she said so softly that he almost missed it over the sound of the running water. 

“I haven’t been staying in Edgewood for more than a month,” he reminded her. He moved around constantly, but Worthington had called him in right before Ellie had dragged him to look at houses in and around that area. 

“I know.” She kept her head down, focused on the dishes. “I’ve been trying to figure out where you go when you’re not here, and from what little I know about where you’ve been staying, you keep circling that place. I don’t think you’re aware of it. I thought it might’ve been because of your daughter, or because of that house you showed me that you used to take Keira to…” She broke off as Alec came up behind her and put his hands on her hips. Soapy water sloshed out of the dish she was currently washing as he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her back against him. That brilliant woman had realized what Alec had never noticed until now. Putting the tragic irony of the location of the case aside, Edgewood was roughly halfway between Keira and Broadchurch. 

“I wanted to be closer to you and the boys,” he confessed and hid his face in the crook of her neck. Ellie dropped the dish into the sink and shut the faucet off. The window over the sink was open and Alec felt the shiver that went through her as the colder air came in with the ending of that pleasantly warm day. He didn’t want the day to be over. 

“I want you to stay with me,” she said suddenly.

“Okay,” Alec agreed. Then his eyes opened. “Tonight?”

He eased up on her and Ellie turned in his embrace. 

“Not just tonight,” she clarified and wiped her damp hands on the hem of her shirt. She took a deep breath and braced herself against the sink. “You’re going to need someone to be there when you have the surgery-”

“It’s the NHS, Miller,” he scoffed and latched onto the sink behind her, hovering over her. “I’ll probably have to wait ‘til Christmas.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Ellie interrupted sharply. They glared at each other and Ellie’s voice dropped dangerously low when she revealed the truth that they’d both been tiptoeing around for months. “I think you and I both know that you won’t last ‘til Christmas.” Alec gaped at her, and then he recalled that heartbreaking conversation he had to have with Tom in the hallway two months ago. 

“Did your sister tell you that?” he asked, barely able to check his temper. Ellie dropped her eyes, unable to hold his gaze. Alec let go of the sink and stalked away from her. 

“Lucy said-” she started but Alec had heard enough from Ellie’s hypocritical sister. 

“She’s not a medical expert!” Alec snapped, telling her the same thing he’d told her son when he wanted to tear that woman apart for scaring the poor boy. 

“I know but-”

“Then why are you listening to her horseshit?” He demanded from the other side of the kitchen. Her reply nearly stopped his heart. 

“She shagged the CMO that examined you.” 

Alec stared at her, wide-eyed and incredulous. His heart actually stuttered and he bent over, planting his hands on the tabletop to steady himself. 

“Oh, my god, it’s true,” Ellie hissed and pressed a hand to her mouth. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Alec spat, a little light-headed as he lifted his eyes to focus on the open window behind her. “What is it with you _people_? Don’t you have any sense of privacy?” 

Ellie wasn’t even listening to him. She had paled and had her hands in her hair now, shoving that beautiful mess of curls from her face and neck. “He thought you should’ve gotten that pacemaker two years ago when they first suggested it, but I bet you were too damn stubborn and now your chances-”

“He’s not a cardiologist or a surgeon!” Alec exploded, striking the tabletop. “And he should be fired for breaking all the laws of patient confidentiality! But for whatever reason this stupid bloody town thinks that they can do whatever they want, and run their stupid mouths about everyone else’s business but their own! Just look at how they treated you after I arrested Joe and told everyone over and over again that you weren’t to blame-” He shut up but it was too late. Breathing hard, he rested his forearms on the wooden surface and struggled to stay standing. After a minute or two of painful silence, he straightened up and used the table to make his way to her. 

She had her back to him. One hand was pressed to her breast and her other arm hugged herself around the waist. Her eyes were fixated on the outside world. Alec leaned against the counter and watched the reflecting light fade from her eyes as the sun set. Finally, he touched her. Ellie tensed up, but he kept his hand there on her back, lightly running his fingers up and down her spine. 

“I’ll call for a cab,” he sighed and pushed off from the counter. 

Ellie’s hand snagged his, halting him in mid-step. 

“I still want you to stay with me,” she said, looking him in the eye. 

Alec entertained the idea a lot longer than he should have before he shook his head.

“I can’t, Miller, your sister-”

“To hell with my sister!” Ellie cut him off, her eyes flashing. “And don’t even think about bringing up the tongues that’ll wag if they see us together because I don’t give a damn about them either. I’m so sick and tired of being _that_ woman who should have known and should have seen that her husband was a fucking-” 

“You’re not that woman, not to me,” Alec interrupted her, his eyes soft and his touch on her cheek even softer. “I think that you should get your stuff packed up and get the hell out of this god forsaken town. Move into a house that’s not tainted by your memories, give the boys a fresh start, and take the DS position.” Ellie searched his face, but didn’t say anything. 

“Of course, you don’t have to listen to me. You could always go somewhere else or do something else,” he backtracked, not wanting in any way or form to influence her decision. Not that he could have, Ellie Richardson was a woman that could make up her own mind. 

“You respect Worthington?” she asked, scrutinizing him. Alec nodded. 

“I highly recommended you,” he said. “She can be tough but she’s not going to judge you based on some small town gossip. She knows you’re innocent and I told her you did good work.”

“You also told me once that I reached my level as a rural DS,” she reminded him, frowning. 

“I underestimated you,” he admitted. “Ellie, I was so wrong about you,” he confessed, echoing her words from last night and tracing her cheekbone with his knuckles. And he had been, on so many levels. Ellie was incredible and Alec wished someone had knocked some sense into him months ago. 

“Does Worthington know that we’re-” She motioned between the two of them, unable to find a proper term for whatever it was that they were doing together. 

“No,” Alec replied quietly. 

“You’re sure?”

“It won’t help your chances, Ellie, even if we were-”

“I wasn’t implying-”

“She used to work with Cooper and Vicky and I, years ago,” Alec cut her off. Sighing again, he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his hip against the counter. “I think she suspected before I did that they were having an affair, and when she heard the allegations made against me in the Sandbrook case…”

“She knew they were shagging and that it was Vicky that lost the evidence?” Ellie’s jaw dropped. “And she never said anything to you?” 

“She couldn’t prove it, Miller. Anyway, it wasn’t any of her business and she had already taken the new DI position well before _that_ case hit.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and worded it more carefully this time. “She doesn’t care about your past or who you’re seeing or shagging or whatever as long as it doesn’t affect your work, but she likes to keep it _fair_. If it were to come out that we were-” he faltered in the same spot as her. “She’d probably take someone else for the job.”

Ellie finally got it. She mirrored his position, folding her arms over her chest. 

“That doesn’t sound very fair to me,” she grumbled. “Is that why you were so hell-bent on getting rid of me when Iris and Cooper showed up?” she asked, curious. 

“Partly,” Alec conceded, although there was a bit more to that. He wanted to shield Ellie from that part of his past for as long as he could and he couldn’t even explain why. It was like he had one foot in a different world from the other and he wanted to keep them separate, even though they were threatening to merge with each passing day. 

“So, you won’t come live with me.” 

“No.”

“You can’t be alone, Alec,” Ellie insisted, shaking her head. 

“I won’t be.” Alec’s tongue had slipped again and Ellie’s eyes rounded as her gaze snapped up to his. “Iris wants me to stay with her,” he informed Ellie, scratching at his stubble. 

“When?” 

“Soon.”

“How soon?” Ellie stepped closer to him. 

“I don’t know,” he groaned. “I can’t avoid her forever.”

“She ignored you for almost three years, Alec,” Ellie pointed out, angrily. 

“It wasn’t her fault,” Alec defended her. “I made that decision.” 

“If she loved you at all Alec, she would have at least checked on you once or twice. If she really cared, she would never have allowed you to get like _this_.” She stabbed a finger in the direction of his chest. 

“You don’t understand,” he tried, but Ellie was unstoppable by this point. 

“Then help me understand, because I’m having trouble understanding why I’m the first person to get you to agree to something that you should’ve had years ago-”

“I couldn’t trust Vicky! Not even with my own bloody daughter,” he exploded. Ellie paused for breath and he rushed onward, “Iris was the _only_ person that I could trust to take care of Keira, and I was willing to do _anything_ , and tell her _anything_ to make sure that my daughter stayed safe with the person that I trusted most while she was still in Vicky’s custody.” He caught his breath and closed his eyes. “I didn’t tell anyone about my heart condition. Mart – my doctors were the only ones that knew until I came here and had a heart attack.” He opened his eyes and focused on her white face in the growing shadows. “That’s when the whole bleeding town and half the police force in England found out because no one can keep their trap shut around here.”

He stormed out of the kitchen and went searching for his phone. It wasn’t in the sitting room and it wasn’t in his coat. Ellie came out of the bedroom with it when he was halfway up the stairs. She stood at the top of the steps and looked down at him where he’d halted with a hand on the railing and the other on the wall. 

“Looking for this?” she asked, holding it up for him to see.

Without taking his eyes off of her, Alec slowly climbed the remaining stairs. Ellie backed up a small step when he reached the landing, but she held her ground. He took the phone from her and was about to call for a car when she spoke. 

“I’m sorry I said those things about Iris, I never meant to insult her or you,” she said and added, “I hate that you’ve been alone for so long and I wanted to blame someone. Some nights it’s unbearable, even though I have Tom and Fred and Luce. I can’t imagine what it would be like without them or anyone at all.”

Alec ended the call before the mobile made it to his ear. 

“I haven’t been alone, not entirely,” he admitted and took a step toward her. Ellie stumbled backwards and suddenly she was against her bedroom door with him just a foot away. “I had Fred and Tom and _you_ …” His voice dropped and her eyes glittered in that strange greyness between light and darkness that had spread throughout the house. 

He cupped her face in one hand and kissed her softly. Or at least he tried to. Ellie surged forward to meet him with an energy that he wasn’t equipped to handle at the moment. He was physically exhausted and it rapidly became clear to both of them that his self-control had almost been exhausted as well.

“What time’s your sister coming?” he asked, breathing hard. 

“Soon,” Ellie responded vaguely, grasping at the hem of his T-shirt and tugging it free from his trousers. Her hands were hot against his skin, and as she turned his face towards hers again, he smelt the lemon scented dish detergent clinging to those palms that were so much cleaner and untainted in comparison to his own.

“Ellie,” he said warningly, hanging onto that last shred of his deteriorating self-control. 

“I don’t care,” she told him again, breathlessly. “I don’t care what she thinks or anyone else.” Taking his face between her dry hands, she held his gaze. Her pupils were so wide that they darkened her eyes to a shade of deep brown he’d never seen. “Alec, stay with me,” she urged him. 

He was tempted but he knew that he couldn’t. Not tonight. Neither one of them were in any shape to deal with the repercussions, or even the task of defining what the hell they were doing, or how much it meant to them. Not yet. 

“When’s your interview?” he asked. It was so hard to focus on anything but her and even harder to slow her down. But the question he posed forced her to pause. 

“Tuesday.”

“I’ll come back then,” he assured her. With one last lingering kiss he detached himself from her and collected his bag from the floor. They’d moved into the bedroom and he hadn’t even noticed. He fished out his mobile and quickly called for the car, because one glance at her with swollen lips and pupils blown wide would sway him. 

Ellie joined him in the kitchen after they’d both used the loo, looking stunningly put together. Her eyes had resumed their lighter hue of brown and Alec found himself thinking about what he could do to her to make her eyes deepen again.

“You’ll watch Fred on Tuesday?” she asked, putting the kettle on. 

“I agreed last night, didn’t I?” he reminded her, smirking when he noted her surprise. “I told you I was paying attention.”

Ellie snorted as he reached up and over her to get the last two mugs he hadn’t packed away. 

“You also agreed to buy me a ring,” she informed him. 

Alec almost dropped the mugs and Ellie laughed. 

“I’m kidding, Alec.” She grinned and took the mugs from him. “You should have seen your face,” she giggled, filling them with tea and forgetting that he couldn’t drink it. Alec accepted it, his eyes mapping out her smile and the way her whole face lit up with it. 

“What?” she asked him and shyly hid her smile behind the chipped mug. Alec shook his head and took a small sip from his own cracked mug. His heartbeat picked up but Alec knew he couldn’t blame it on the caffeine. He eyed her bare left hand, and for one aching moment he wished that things were different and that he could fill that emptiness that had been left behind in her ex-husband’s destructive wake. 

“I wish you would stay,” Ellie sighed, leaning against him.

Alec snuck his arm around her, drawing her into his side. He kissed her forehead and hoped she understood that all he wanted to do was forget everything and stay with her for as long as he could. 

*

She woke on the sofa in the sitting room as Alec tried to get up without waking her. She didn’t remember when she dozed off, but the combination of all the physical labor, the cup of tea, and Alec’s warm familiar body beneath hers must’ve done her in. A car honked outside and Alec cursed under his breath. Ellie’s eyes fluttered open. 

“Sorry,” he whispered and clumsily climbed over her. 

“Don’t go,” she pleaded groggily, but she was already sinking down into the cushions that still retained some of his body heat. His breath fanned out across her cheek as he bent to kiss the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll see you soon darlin’,” he promised, brushing her hair back from her forehead. His touch and his warmth lingered long after he was gone, following her into her dreams. 

The next thing she knew, Tom’s laughter woke her and Fred had leapt into her waiting arms. Oliver winked and Lucy eagerly asked how she enjoyed her weekend “alone”. Ellie rolled her eyes and dragged a half-heartedly protesting Tom down onto the couch for a hug. She had one arm around each of her boys and her sister and nephew grinning at her from across the room, but she still felt as if someone was missing. 

And for the first time in months, Joe wasn’t the first person she thought of. In fact he didn’t even cross her mind as she kissed each of her son’s cheeks much to their shrieking delight and utter mortification. All she could think of was Alec, alone in his hotel room, miles away, and how much she wanted him on that sofa beside her too. That thought kept her awake, long after her boys were asleep, and well into the wee hours of the morning. And when she finally fell asleep again, Joe didn’t haunt her dreams; instead it was Alec that was there to meet her. 

*

Months later, she thinks about that weekend with Alec Hardy and how it all started on an insufferably hot day in May. 

She wishes she’d known then that when he left her that night on the sofa, he took a piece of her broken heart with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope it was worth the wait and any constructive criticism or feedback would be much appreciated! Keep your fingers crossed that I can get Ch.21 and the rest of the stuff I wrote edited and posted before 2016! Just kidding! Hopefully…


	21. Temperature Rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to those of you that reviewed/commented or left kudos! Today’s Veteran’s Day in the US and I know Remembrance Day in the UK just passed. Hope you thank a veteran today for their service and if you’re interested you should google “In Flanders Field” by John McCrea and a picture of the 2014 Tower of London poppy display (Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red).

In spite of it being overcast, Monday morning dawned too bright for most of Broadchurch’s residents who were struggling to recover from the warm weekend’s festivities. The rest of them shook their heads and gossiped, or laughed at Nige Carter who couldn’t figure out how he wound up on the roof of the police station, let alone how he was going to get down from it without the help of the amused police force that felt that leaving him up there for a couple more humiliating hours was more than sufficient punishment. 

So, it was unsurprising that no one paid much attention to or even noticed the bump on Paul Coates’ forehead. He finally confessed to Becca Fisher that he’d walked into a telephone pole Saturday night, despite being one of Broadchurch’s completely sober residents that evening. Becca thought it was hilarious and Paul Coates didn’t tell her or anyone else the reason why it happened: the sight of Ellie Miller snogging former DI Hardy had shocked him. 

*

Tuesday was another unusually clear day. Ellie offered to drop Fred off at his hotel, but they both knew that Alec’s room was too small and cramped and that there wasn’t much within walking distance to safely entertain a very active toddler. 

“You could always take him to the Market,” Ellie had suggested playfully. Alec had groaned, recalling the last time he’d made that mistake and earned them both a lifetime ban from the building. Ellie’s laughter had echoed through the phone, and Alec had sworn he could still hear it bouncing off the walls of his narrow room even after she’d hung up. 

The car was too warm and stuffy, and Alec was overdressed and anxious to see Ellie for the first time since that whirlwind weekend. Only two days had passed, but Alec had been keenly aware of every minute that had dragged out in his empty and hollow hotel room. He’d texted his daughter twice, made four phone calls, and thought about ringing her a hundred times more. But there were only so many times that he could listen to that robotic voice telling him that the voicemail box was currently full, and that he couldn’t leave her a message. He even rang Vicky, but she was at work and understandably distracted. She promised him she’d talk to Keira again, but Alec knew it wouldn’t matter. He finally tried to tell her why he needed to see Keira and why he needed a surgery that could potentially kill him, but someone they’d obviously booked for drunk and disorderly conduct was screaming obscenities in the background. Alec didn’t bother trying her again and Vicky didn’t call him back. He could’ve called Iris, but something kept stopping him. He wasn’t ready to return to the place he’d once considered his home, not yet. 

The driver took advantage of Alec’s ruminative state and tacked on a few more miles with a lengthier route into Broadchurch. Alec was a half hour later than they’d planned on and lost another twenty quid. He was pissed off and out of breath when he let himself into her house. Alec collided with Ellie in the kitchen, startling both of them. His heart jolted in his chest and then sped up at the sight of her. 

“You shouldn’t leave the door unlocked,” he snapped, hanging onto her arms. “Anyone could walk in.”

“The only murderer this town ever had to worry about was already inside my house,” Ellie shot back and poked him in the chest. “And a locked door never stopped _you_ from coming in.” They glared at each other until Alec collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table. 

“You’re late.” 

“I know,” Alec sighed and slumped in his seat. “The driver was an arsehole and took the long way.” He shrugged out of his coat and threw it onto the tabletop. 

“How far did you have to walk?” Ellie asked, familiar with his habit of getting dropped off a short distance away. 

“Just up the drive.” He scratched at his sweaty neck. He didn’t like the concern in Ellie’s eyes and his eyes darted to the clock over the stove. “Where’s Fred?”

“In the nursery,” she replied with that soft smile she always reserved for her children. “He fell asleep face first in his lunch,” she chuckled and perched on the edge of the table. 

Alec raked his eyes over her, noting the meticulous care she’d taken with her appearance and the familiar grey blazer paired with the light blue button-down blouse. He had a flashback to when they worked together. Although she’d been married to Joe and irritatingly sunny and smiley, he still missed that Ellie Miller because she’d been so blissfully naïve and _happy_. She’d never get that back no matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard _he_ tried to make it better… 

“Nervous?” 

“I’m nervous about being late and leaving you in charge,” she retorted, but Alec wasn’t fooled. He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. Reaching out, he firmly clasped her shoulder. She looked up at him and her brown eyes betrayed her anxiety. 

“You’ll get the job,” he assured her. 

“I’m more worried about my kid and you.” She crossed her arms over her chest. 

“I’ve watched him before,” he huffed. 

“You burned yourself on the stove, let him take a nap in a mud puddle, and somehow managed to get yourself and my son banned from a grocery store,” she snorted, shaking her head. Alec rolled his eyes but he couldn’t deny it. She stretched out a hand and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. Her palm stayed there, cool against his burning forehead. 

“You’re hot,” she observed, frowning. 

“The idiot that drove me had the heat cranked up and it’s warm in here,” he complained. She dropped her hand and he stripped off his jumper, pulling it up and over his head. He leaned over her to put it with his coat, resting a hand on her hip for balance. Their eyes met and Alec touched one of the bobby pins flattening and confining her curls. Ellie pushed him back with her hands on his chest. 

“Don’t even think about it,” she said warningly, pointing a finger at him.

“Think about what?” he asked, smirking as he stroked his hand up her side. Ellie squirmed and hopped down off the table. Her fingers attacked the top button of his collared shirt, then the second, and the third... Alec caught one of her hands in his before she went any lower.

“You’re going to be late, DS Richardson,” he reminded her.

“Thought you were hot,” Ellie said innocently. 

“I am.”

Ellie cocked her head and her other hand flattened against his stomach. Alec sucked in a sharp breath as her hand slinked lower, her fingers tiptoeing over his belt buckle. 

“Don’t do that,” he growled. 

“Do what _sir_?” Ellie asked, smugly. 

Alec stepped forward but Ellie was too quick for him. Grinning, she slipped away from him and grabbed her bag off the counter. Alec suppressed a groan and thrust his fingers through his hair. 

“I don’t want any break-ins, fires, burns, or any blood on my kitchen floor, you hear me? I want you _both_ in one piece when I get back, that’s an order,” she told him, fishing out her keys and slinging her purse over her shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am.” Alec mockingly saluted her. He tried to reach for her again but Ellie was already halfway across the room. Following her out into the hallway, he caught up with her as she was going out the door. 

“Ellie!” She paused and turned back to look at him. He swallowed hard and tipped his head respectfully toward her. “Good luck, Richardson.”

Ellie smiled and blushed. 

“Thanks, sir.”

And then she was gone and Alec was alone again with that familiar ache in his chest that intensified each time they parted. 

*

Fred slept for over an hour, waking long after Alec had flipped through every channel on Ellie’s telly a hundred times without finding a single thing he could tolerate, and eventually nodded off with BBC World News on in the background. Alec abruptly woke to the sound of another car bomb exploding in Iraq and Fred calling for his Mummy. 

He shot up and his heart actually stalled, or at least it seemed that way to Alec. It was hard to tell with the sound of the television rapidly fading out along with his vision. He flopped back down on the sofa, coughing and fighting to breathe past the increasing pain in his chest. Opening his eyes again, he twisted his heavy head and tried to focus on the kitchen where he’d left his coat. It seemed so far away when in reality it was within fifteen steps. Struggling to sit up, he managed to actually get his feet onto the floor before he realized that he wasn’t going to make it. Not this time. He shut his eyes, falling backwards onto the sofa. Focusing on his ragged breathing and his slowing heartbeat only increased his anxiety that something was very wrong. Distantly, he could hear Fred crying out for someone that wasn’t coming. That was the last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness. 

*

The crying had stopped, that was the first thing Alec noticed. He was in Ellie’s sitting room on the sofa. The telly was off and his coat was draped over him. He immediately found and took two of the last emergency pills he had left, because he’d gone through so many over the last few weeks. He was feeling shitty and his heartbeat wasn’t right, but he was breathing and the pain had been reduced to its usual dull irritation. Alec wasn’t a cardiologist, but he was familiar with his own body and _that_ hadn’t happened to him before, at least not for no reason at all. The stress of the job and the cases would wear him down, nightmares sometimes got to him, arguments and emotions running high were also triggers, but a television and a whimpering toddler had never brought on anything like _that_. 

_Fred_. 

“Fuck!” Alec was on his feet and stumbling out of the sitting room. 

“Alec?”

Tom poked his head out of the kitchen. Alec was so frantically focused on Fred that he couldn’t begin to process Tom’s sudden presence in the house. 

“Tom where’s-”

Before Tom could catch him, Fred ran out of the kitchen and wrapped his chubby arms around Alec’s legs. Fred looked up at him with those brown eyes so much like his mother and gave him a big toothy grin. Alec felt a dizzying sense of relief and a lightheadedness that came dangerously close to bringing him down again. His knees did give out and he just managed to move Fred away before he was on the floor with him, pulling him into his arms. He crushed the child against his chest, his eyes stinging with tears. 

“Oh, god, Fred,” he whispered and rocked back and forth. His heart had leveled out but was threatening to go into overdrive if he didn’t calm himself down, or stop thinking about the frightening plethora of terrible things that could’ve happened to Ellie’s little boy while Alec was passed out. A tear leaked out of the corner of his eye and he cupped the back of the squirming boy’s head to press a kiss on his forehead. Fred wiggled free from his embrace. Alec held him at arm’s length for a long moment, just to be sure that the boy really was fine, before he let go and allowed him to run and hide behind his brother. The two wide-eyed boys stared at Alec, still on his knees in the middle of the hallway. Alec swiped at his eyes and drew in a deep steadying breath. 

“How long-” He stopped himself. “When did you get home?” he asked Tom, struggling to hide the tremor in his hands. He didn’t even bother trying to stand, there was no way his legs would support him. 

“Maybe ten minutes ago…” Tom trailed off and ducked his head. 

“It’s already three o’clock?” Alec’s heart skipped a beat. That meant he’d been passed out for over two hours and Ellie would probably be home any second. There were so many possible things that could have happened to Fred. Alec was so wrapped up in thinking of how scared Fred must’ve been that he almost missed what Tom said. 

“No, it’s half past one,” Tom corrected him and jammed his hands into his pockets. He shuffled his feet, his eyes on his socks. Alec relaxed only slightly. It’d been closer to a half hour, which was still alarming and inexcusable. _Anything_ could’ve happened to Fred. Running a shaking hand through his hair, something occurred to him. 

“What are you doing home?” he wondered. 

“It was an early release today,” Tom informed him. Alec’s head snapped up. 

“Shit,” Alec blurted out. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, cursing himself inwardly for failing not just Fred but Tom as well. Scraping his hands down his face, he looked up at the boy who still couldn’t meet his eyes. “Tom, I didn’t know,” he apologized. “Your mother probably told me but I forgot. I would’ve-”

“’S okay, I don’t think Mum knew about it either,” Tom interrupted him. His cheeks were pink and Alec got the impression that he was missing something. 

“How’d you get home?” Alec asked.

“Got a ride from a friend’s mom,” Tom answered vaguely. He went into the kitchen with Fred toddling after him. 

“Tom!” Alec scrambled to his feet and fortunately he was able to follow them. “Tom, look, I’ll talk to your mother and I’ll tell her how sorry-”

“No, don’t talk to Mum!” Tom exclaimed, his changing voice cracking. Alec halted in the middle of the room. Tom cleared his voice and his eyes lowered to the floor again. “I mean she’ll be mad that she forgot too and she’ll worry.” Alec frowned and opened his mouth, but Tom was suddenly in front of him, begging: “Don’t tell her, Alec. Please, don’t tell her.” 

Alec was taken aback. Fred was just as surprised by the outburst and was at Alec’s feet again. Alec sat down in the same chair he’d vacated an hour ago and pulled Fred into his lap. 

“Tom-” he started, choosing his words carefully. But Tom spoke over him. 

“If you tell her, I’ll tell her that you fell asleep and Fred got out of his crib and fell down the stairs.” 

“Oh, no,” Alec groaned, looking down at the seemingly unharmed boy in his lap. It was even worse than he expected. He pushed back Fred’s mop of curls, anxiously searching for a bump or a bruise. “Tell me he didn’t-”

“Mum doesn’t know that,” Tom stated and Alec’s gaze snapped back to him. Tom’s eyes were calculating. Clearly, Fred hadn’t gotten out of his crib, but Tom really didn’t want Ellie to know that he was home early or maybe that he hadn’t gone to school at all.

“Fine, I won’t tell her that you skived off school today,” Alec agreed, correctly guessing that Tom had skipped the day altogether, judging by the reaction he got from Tom. “I won’t tell her, but only if you tell me where you were today.” Tom hadn’t been home. Perhaps Alec wouldn’t have noticed but Ellie would’ve.

He was expecting the skate park, the beach, or anywhere except-

“I went to see my Dad.” 

Alec’s heart fluttered in his chest. Fred pressed his hand there and repeated the word, in case he thought he’d heard Tom wrong.

“ _Daddy_!”

“You did what?” Alec gaped at him. 

“I went to see Dad, or at least I tried to,” Tom grumbled, scowling and crossing his arms over his chest in a manner eerily reminiscent of his mother. “The bus doesn’t go all the way there and I wouldn’t have had enough money to get home if I’d gotten a cab.” 

Alec’s jaw was unhinged and Fred took it upon himself to close his mouth for him. Alec caught his little fingers with his and shifted the smaller boy in his lap, wishing that dealing with a teenager was as easy. He’d been so terrible at this the first time around that his daughter had actually begun to close herself off from him well before he left her. 

“You went by yourself?”

“ _Obviously_.” Tom rolled his eyes. 

“Have you seen him since…” Alec faltered.

“Mum wouldn’t let me go to the sentencing,” Tom snapped, and Alec got a taste of that anger that he’d been bottling up and hiding from his mother for months. “I wanted to go but she told me I was too _young_ ,” he spat. “I’m thirteen-years-old! I think I should be allowed to see my own father if I want to.” 

“Have you talked to her about this?” Alec asked carefully. But his mind was already going back to Saturday afternoon and that conversation he’d had with Ellie on the seawall overlooking the harbor. There was no way in hell Ellie would’ve agreed to a visit.

“I tried once, right after the sentencing, but she got upset,” Tom said quietly as the spark in his eyes faded. “She used to cry a lot every time I mentioned Dad. So, I stopped trying to. She hid it, but I knew, I always knew.” 

Alec’s heart shattered again right there in the kitchen. He didn’t know what to say. All he could do was hug Fred closer and wish that Tom would let him do the same. Ellie had been hurting so much and she’d tried so hard to bury it, but she wasn’t the only one that had been sharing that pain and keeping it a secret. 

“She got better when you started coming here,” Tom said.

Alec bit down on his lip as his eyes started to burn. Fred wormed out from under his arm until Alec released him. He scampered beneath the table, peering at them both from between the table legs. Even Fred hadn’t come out of that mess completely unscathed. He would never know his father. 

“Tom, it takes time.” Slowly, he rose from the table and approached Tom. “Your mother’s not invincible and neither are you.” Alec observed that in the two months that had passed since their last heartbreaking conversation in the hallway, Tom had grown another inch or two. He didn’t have to crouch down to get on eyelevel with him, only bend his knees a bit. Tom had grown so much more than a couple of inches, though, Alec could see that maturity when he looked in his eyes. He touched Tom’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to keep holding onto that Tom. I think you should talk to your mother, she’ll understand more than anyone else, but if you feel like you can’t, you can talk to me,” he offered hesitantly and squeezed his shoulder. Tom sniffed and looked up at him with watery eyes. Alec dropped his hand to Tom’s elbow, wanting to say more but knowing that he’d never find those words that could ease that pain because there weren’t any. 

“I want you to take me to see my father.”

Alec blinked and let go of him. 

“Tom, your mother-”

“You know that she’ll never take me or let me go,” Tom interrupted him, his anger flaring up again. “I could ask Ollie or Aunt Lucy but they’ll tell her, and I’ll never get to see him until I have enough money to take a cab.” 

“And what makes you think that I won’t tell her,” Alec challenged him, folding his arms over his chest. That hard calculating expression was on Tom’s face again and there was a fire in his eyes. 

“I’ll tell my Aunt Lucy you’ve been sleeping with my mother.”

Alec was floored, literally. Fortunately, there was a chair within his reach and he was able to sit down. He should’ve seen it coming. It wasn’t like he or Ellie had made much of an effort to hide it, and Tom was partially responsible for it happening in the first place. Tom had fallen asleep on the sofa twice, taking up what would’ve been the place where Alec should have slept those nights. But Tom was thirteen-years-old and he wasn’t stupid. 

“Tom, it wasn’t like that.” Alec tried to explain, because it hadn’t been, not then. It took all of his will power not to think of Friday and Saturday night and the mornings that had followed. 

“Aunt Lucy doesn’t know that.” 

Alec stared at the boy that was determined to have his way and was willing to do anything to get it. He wanted to tell Tom that he didn’t give a shit about what Ellie’s nosy sister thought of them and that Ellie felt the same, but whatever it was that they were doing (they certainly weren’t shagging yet) Alec knew that it was fragile enough that Lucy could find a way to wreck it. He also knew that Ellie would _murder_ him if he took Tom into a prison to see his father. Clasping his hands between his knees, he leaned forward and tried again to talk Tom out of it. 

“She already _thinks_ that we’ve slept together,” he informed Tom, giving him a look that he usually reserved for the interrogation room. 

“Does she know that you were here this weekend?” Tom asked. 

Alec stilled and his heart did too, but this time Alec was more prepared for it. Taking a deep breath, his heavy heart carried on and he made one last attempt to stop Tom. But it was going to cost him. Ellie would never forgive him, if she found out. Alec was willing to take the risk, because the idea of taking Tom into that prison and giving Joe exactly what he wanted, upset his stomach more. 

“Tom, do you know why your mother wouldn’t let you help her pack up the house and sent you to your Aunt Lucy’s instead?” he inquired. 

Tom’s eyes narrowed. 

“Maybe she wanted a dirty weekend with you,” he snarled, but Alec could see the doubt in his eyes. 

“You know that’s not true, Tom,” Alec went on softly, utilizing those interrogation techniques that had been drilled into his head for almost two decades. Tom blinked and Alec hated himself the moment the boy dropped his eyes, and for what he was going to tell him. 

“Your mother had to go through some of your father’s stuff and she was afraid she might find something,” Alec began hesitantly. 

“Like what?” Tom demanded, his blazing eyes meeting Alec’s. 

“Tom, your father’s a murderer,” Alec stated bluntly. “He murdered Danny and he – he was doing things that he shouldn’t have been before that night happened.” Christ, this was even harder than the last conversation he’d had with Tom about his heart condition. Swallowing hard, he told Tom what he needed to hear. “Joe had some things in his possession that he shouldn’t have had. Your mother found them when she was boxing everything up.”

Tom didn’t move a muscle and Alec sighed inwardly before gently breaking the truth. 

“She found definitive evidence that your father was a pedophile. That’s why I had to come down Tom. I had to get the evidence and turn it over to the police.” It was the truth, or at least part of it. Alec didn’t know exactly why Ellie had asked him to come down instead of Geoffrey or simply done it herself; but he wondered if maybe her fears, and the certainty that he would be able to handle something like that better with their shared occupation and past, might have been part of it. 

Alec could sense that Tom was bending beneath the pressure of his unwavering gaze and the truth that he probably had suspected. 

“I don’t believe you!” His voice cracked again and it took everything in Alec not to reach out to the growing teenager that was still a child. Instead Alec heartlessly broke him. 

“Would you like to see proof?” 

It had taken three words to break Ellie Miller. It took six to break her son. Tom shook his head. His eyes filled with the tears he’d been trying so hard to hold back and he crumbled. Alec kicked out the chair across from him as the boy folded in on himself. He helped Tom sit down and then resumed his seat facing him. Keeping a hand on the boy’s shoulder, Alec couldn’t help but think of the day he’d torn Ellie apart in an interrogation room. He hated himself, but he needed Tom to understand that his loving and attentive father was also a monster. He didn’t know what he would’ve done if Tom had said he needed proof. 

“I’m so sorry, Tom,” Alec apologized as Tom cried. “I wish that there was something I could say-”

Tom jerked away from him and wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand. There was snot on his shirt and his eyes were bloodshot, but burning with that rage that Alec had hoped he’d managed to extinguish. The only thing he’d managed to do was stoke it. 

“Say you’ll take me to see my father,” Tom demanded. 

“Tom-”

“I need to see him. Don’t you get it? I need to talk to him! I need to understand and-” Ellie’s son stopped, struggling to find the right word, hindered by his blind rage that was leaking into his speech. But Alec understood all too well what he wanted and what he needed from Joe. Tom needed closure just as much as his mother had. Alec had tried to talk her out of going to the sentencing several times, and had spent the night before fighting with her in his hotel room, but in the end nothing could change her mind once it was made up. It took another screaming match in a parking garage and a couple of lonely months for Alec to understand why. Tom was so much like his mother that Alec knew that he couldn’t hold out for much longer. 

“If you don’t take me, I’ll find a way to go on my own,” Tom threatened and Alec knew he would. He sighed, torn between the prospect of Ellie murdering him or her son attempting something extremely stupid on his own. “Please, Alec,” Tom pleaded, desperate and vulnerable. Tom didn’t want to go alone, not unless he had to. 

“Your mother’s going to kill me,” Alec groaned, slouching in his chair and giving in. Tom’s face immediately brightened and he straightened up. 

“She won’t find out,” Tom assured him. 

“You can’t tell her or your Aunt Lucy about any of this then,” Alec bargained with him. “Or I’ll have to explain to her how you’re turning into a juvenile delinquent and she’ll give you a bollocking you won’t forget.” 

Tom paled and nodded. 

“I won’t,” he vowed. 

“Alright,” Alec conceded. 

“I want to go tomorrow,” Tom insisted as if he’d plotted this out well in advance. 

“Not tomorrow,” Alec refused, shaking his head. Tom’s face immediately darkened. 

“I’ll-”

“I have a doctor’s appointment, Tom,” Alec explained, reluctantly. “I can’t miss it and your mother knows about it too.” Alec briefly considered using Tom as an excuse to put it off again, but Ellie’s threats were still very fresh in his mind. 

“Oh.” Tom went red and looked so ashamed and scared that they might have to discuss Alec’s illness again, that Alec kept talking. 

“I can take you another day, maybe next Friday,” Alec offered, hoping that by then Tom would come to his senses and change his mind. 

“No, it has to be this week,” Tom said, and Alec knew he had a plan. “I’ve got exams next week and we’re probably moving the week after.”

“Friday,” Alec suggested. 

“Thursday,” Tom argued.

“Fine.” Alec exhaled heavily and knew he was going to regret this. As if on cue, there was a loud crash from the sitting room. Alec and Tom looked at each other and jumped to the same conclusion. 

“Fred.” 

Tom was faster, but Alec arrived in time to hear Tom’s curse. 

“Language,” he told the boy reflexively, but the word “shit” definitely came to mind when he saw the box that had been tipped over and the mess that Hurricane Fred had left in his wake this time. The toddler was sitting right in the middle of it, guilty. 

“How did he even get that open?” Tom wondered, eyeing the overturned box of food, and then the jar of jam that Fred had opened and smeared all over himself, the rug, and the coffee table. 

“He’s two, Tom, he can do _anything_ ,” Alec said, vividly recalling his memories of Keira in her terrible twos and the unbelievable catastrophic messes she’d created. 

Fred’s round eyes darted from his brother to Alec and he spread his hands. 

“Not me!” he denied adamantly with a gravity that he must’ve learned from his older brother. 

Alec couldn’t help himself: he laughed. The sound startled both Tom and Fred. Alec coughed to hide it, struggling to restrain himself. 

“ _Shit_!” Fred mimicked his brother, clapping his hands together. 

Tom groaned and Alec’s laughter bubbled up again. 

“I’m blaming that on you,” Tom warned him and Alec didn’t even care. Fred smiled and crawled to Alec. Standing, he held out his arms to him. Alec picked him up, still chortling. Fred shoved his sticky fingers in Alec’s face and left purple handprints on his white collared shirt. Tom grinned. 

“You’re cleaning him up,” he told Alec. 

“Fine,” Alec consented and motioned to the debris in the sitting room. “But you’re cleaning _that_ up.” 

Tom’s face fell and Alec left the room sniggering with a giggly Fred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tom might seem out of character, but the scene in S1 where Paul Coates finds Tom smashing his laptop and Tom threatens to lie to everyone about Paul’s character if he tells anyone about the laptop or turns it over to the police, really stuck with me. Tom has also made some very mild but not very serious threats in earlier chapters. Anyways feedback is always appreciated and I hope that some of you are enjoying your day off. I should have the next chapter up soon!


	22. Blindingly Bright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the US and I sincerely hope that the rest of you are having an awesome day as well. I’m thankful for all of you that have read this story and let me know. Over the last year I lost a lot of the things and people that I didn’t realize that I should’ve been thankful for. This story and everyone that took the time to say “good” or “ahdfjhdjksahfjdsk” or “I hate you” or even “I can’t believe I just wasted ten minutes of my life on this stupid shit” were what got me through it, so I want to say _thank you_.

Later, Alec and Tom sat on the sunny front stoop, waiting for Ellie to come home. Fred had been cleaned up and Tom had done a surprisingly good job on the sitting room. Alec was thankful he’d worn so many layers because his shirt was covered in grape jam and there wasn’t enough time to wash it. He threw his navy jumper on over his undershirt and hid the ruined shirt in a paper bag. 

Fred was entertaining himself with a collection of rocks he’d gathered under the supervision of both Alec and Tom. Alec felt better and had his last packet of pills in his pocket, but he had been shaken by the earlier episode and was wary of what might happen if he was left alone with Fred. He was relieved that Tom was there with him, or at least he was until Tom started asking questions again. 

“Alec?” Tom asked as Fred dropped another fist-sized rock at Alec’s feet, narrowly missing his toes. 

“Yeah?” Alec picked up the rock and dropped it onto a growing pile underneath the hedge and well out of the path of anyone walking up the driveway. 

“You care about my Mum, right?” 

Alec whipped around to stare at Tom. Two months ago, Tom had awkwardly and sleepily urged Alec to tell his mother that he _cared_ about her in the hope that Ellie would stop dating Geoffrey. But a lot had changed since then.

“I care about all of you,” he said, treading carefully. 

“I know but you were here over the weekend, and you’ve slept in the bedroom. I know you said it’s not like _that_ -” Tom scrunched up his nose, not quite mature enough to elaborate or go into the details. Alec would’ve found it funny, if he hadn’t been distracted by the memory of stumbling into Ellie’s bedroom on Saturday night, burrowing his nose in her salty hair, and tipping her back onto the bed, both knackered but laughing. His jumper was suddenly uncomfortably tight and itchy on his heated skin and he completely missed what Tom had asked him. 

“What?” This time Fred’s bigger rock did land on his toes. Alec winced, but the brief pain and picking up the rock helped him focus again. 

“Are you and my Mum…” Tom trailed off, squirming as he tried to find the right words. Alec waited patiently, his eyes on Tom and his hands holding onto that filthy small boulder that Fred found so appealing that he’d gifted it to Alec. 

“I mean are you – you’re not-” Tom couldn’t formulate the question that Alec knew they’d have to answer to eventually. He honestly didn’t know what the bloody hell they were doing so how could he possibly explain it to Tom? Besides, Tom was Ellie’s son and she would have to be the one to talk to him, assuming that there was something to talk to him about. Alec stared unblinkingly at Tom until once again his gaze was too much for the already embarrassed boy to handle. 

“Never mind,” Tom mumbled and took out his mobile.

Alec put down the rock. Tom kicked it away from Fred and into the shrubbery below them without taking his eyes off of the screen. 

“Are you coming to my football game next Saturday?” Tom asked, his attention drifting as he opened up a game on his phone. 

“Do you want me to come?” Alec wondered, because this was the first he was hearing of it and Tom had never asked him to go to any of them before. 

“If you want to,” Tom offered, shrugging. “Geoffrey’s coming,” he added. 

“Geoffrey?” Alec repeated incredulously. 

“Yeah, Aunt Lucy invited him yesterday when we ran into him at the Market,” Tom explained. If Tom hadn’t been so consumed by the game on his phone, he would’ve gotten the answer to his earlier question regarding the extent of Alec’s feelings for Ellie. It was written all over Alec’s face. 

“You talked to Geoffrey?” he asked, when he’d found his voice again.

Tom nodded. His thumbs were drumming on his phone and his focus was sliding further and further away from Alec as he was sucked into the game.

“He’s nice, I guess. Mum seems to like him anyway, and he took Fred and me out for 99’s the other day,” he admitted absently, as the game consumed his attention entirely. 

Fred dropped another rock on his toes but Alec didn’t even feel it. His next rock hit Tom’s shin and caused him to lose his game. 

“ _Fred_!” he moaned. Alec seized Fred before Tom could do anything else. Luckily, Ellie pulled up and parked over Fred’s rock collection, much to his dismay. Tom stomped over to her, complaining about his annoying little brother. Ellie wrapped her arm around his shoulders, her purse hanging off of the other. Alec stood with a wriggling Fred and immediately forgot all about Geoffrey as soon as their eyes met. Ellie took her son from him and gave him a quick smile that erased all thoughts of that man and everything else. 

Alec had to wait an agonizingly long twenty minutes for a sulky Tom to leave the kitchen with Fred clinging to his leg. Tom whined, but reluctantly bent down and dragged Fred off to his bedroom. Alec waited until he heard the slamming door before he turned to Ellie. 

“Did you get it?” he blurted out.

Ellie beamed at him and the excitement in her eyes was infectious. 

“I won’t know ‘til Monday, but CS Milton seemed very enthusiastic and I think DI Worthington approved of me too. She thinks highly of you and she mentioned that a recommendation from you was hard to come by.” She bit down on her lip but she couldn’t suppress that widening grin. Alec couldn’t stop himself. He kissed her right there in the middle of the kitchen. 

“I knew you’d get it.” Cupping her cheek, he smiled. 

“I don’t know that yet!” She swatted his arm but she was beaming. 

He stole another quick kiss before the boys returned.

“Alec.” Ellie stayed him with her hand on his arm. Her eyes turned serious. “I wouldn’t have gotten that interview if it wasn’t for you.”

Alec shook his head and wondered again why Ellie still couldn’t understand how amazing and brilliant she was.

“I only gave a reference. _You_ got the job,” he reminded her. 

Ellie squeezed his arm and Alec brushed his lips over her forehead. She didn’t allow him to pull away, not entirely. Frowning, she combed her fingers through his hair. 

“I’m fine,” he snapped as she squinted at him and tilted his head with her other hand for a closer examination. “I am,” he insisted, fidgeting. 

“Alec, you’ve got grape jam in your hair and down the back of your neck,” Ellie discovered, narrowing her eyes. “What happened while I was gone?” she demanded, propping her hands on her hips. 

Sighing, he ran his own hand through his sticky and sickeningly sweet hair as Tom came thundering down the stairs with Fred. Tom took one look at his mother and escaped outside, leaving Alec to face Ellie’s wrath alone. 

*

Ellie had calmed down by the time they reached the restaurant. Tom wanted to go out and Alec was invited to tag along. Ellie didn’t give him the option of saying no. Of course, Tom had chosen the most popular restaurant within twenty miles and there was at least a half hour wait. Tom didn’t want to go anywhere else and there was an arcade next door that had obviously influenced his decision. It took only two minutes of Tom complaining for Alec to surprise all of them by suggesting that he take Tom and Fred over to the arcade while Ellie waited for the table. Ellie tried to give him money, but Alec had already handed over half the cash in his wallet to Tom who immediately ran off. Alec followed with Fred. 

As soon as he stepped inside the arcade he regretted his generous gesture. There were too many flashing lights and the noise was worse than the music at the dive bar he’d been forced to endure Friday night. Alec hated every second of it. It didn’t help that every time someone hit the jackpot, alarms went off that threatened that delicate steadiness of his heartbeat, he’d only managed to get under control a couple of hours ago with two of his last remaining emergency pills. Once again he questioned his sanity, as Fred started to wail when he tried to avoid the sensory overload and wait outside with him. Apparently, Fred was just as enchanted and enamored by the arcade as his brother. Although he couldn’t play any of the games, he loved the lights and sounds as much as Alec loathed them. It felt like an eternity for Ellie to text them that the table was ready, when in reality it was probably closer to a half hour. Tom forced him to stay even longer as he turned in his shockingly large amount of tickets for stupid little trinkets and prizes. Fred cried until Tom reluctantly used the last of his tickets to buy a couple of cheap toys for him. Tom didn’t look at them, and it was only when Fred tried to shove the object into his mouth that Alec realized something else had accidentally came along with the small stuffed unicorn. 

“Don’t eat that,” Alec chided Fred and tucked the bauble safely away in his coat pocket. 

He was tired and his head was pounding along with his heart by the time they joined Ellie back at the restaurant. He went to the restroom, splashed some water on his face, and took two more of his pills. It helped a little bit. Noticing that there were only four more remaining, did not. But he had an appointment with Marty in the morning. A refill would help him, a visit with Marty was not going to make anything better, except of course the approval for a pacemaker. Alec lifted his eyes to the mirror and a stranger stared back at him. Ellie was right, he couldn’t live like this. Pushing off from the sink, he left the restroom. 

From where he stood, he could see them, sitting in the center of all that irritating chatter and laughter. Tom said something to Ellie that made her laugh so hard that she picked up her napkin and put it to her mouth. Fred threw his fork and it almost hit the oblivious occupants of the table behind them, causing both Tom and Ellie to burst into a fresh round of muffled laughter. They were happy together; just the three of them. There was a fourth chair at the table, and a ghost that sometimes lurked in it, but it didn’t matter anymore. They didn’t need that chair to be filled. They’d pushed their chairs closer together and filled the space on their own.

A baby started screaming at the table in front of him. The mother bore such a striking resemblance to Vicky when he’d first met her that Alec wondered if that was what his daughter would look like in ten years, or if he’d even be around to see her or at least a picture. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard the sound of her voice because she wouldn’t answer his bloody voicemails. That chair too had been taken by Cooper. It was all too much. He took one last longing look at Ellie, her sons and the empty chair they didn’t notice anymore. Then he walked out of the restaurant. 

*

Ellie finally found him hunched over on the bench outside the restaurant with his head in his hands. She’d waited for almost forty-five minutes, called Alec three times, and had Tom go into the restroom twice. She’d searched the entire restaurant again, before leaving Tom with Fred and heading out to see if he’d gone back to the car. 

“Alec?” The dinner rush was almost over and Alec was alone. “What the hell are doing out here?” she hissed, sitting down next to him. “Why don’t you pick up your bloody mobile like a normal person? Alec, are you even listening to me?” She smacked him and Alec’s elbow slid right off his thigh, upsetting the tentative balance he had. He flopped to one side and his eyes popped open in his pale face. He struggled to turn his head in his palm enough to focus on her. Ellie realized then that more than just his equilibrium was off. 

“Oh, my god,” she gasped as an icy fear crept into her veins. She reached out to him. 

“ _Don’t_.” Alec flinched so violently that Ellie backed off. He tried to sit up, but his hand suddenly hit his chest and he squeezed his eyes shut. When he started to slump forward, Ellie caught him with her arms around his torso. She helped him sit up against the back of the bench, alarmed by his dead weight.

“Are they in your pocket or your coat?” Ellie pawed at him, emptying both of his pockets with shaking hands. When they weren’t there, she tried to climb over him to get to his coat that was hanging off the bench beside him. 

“ _Ellie_.” Alec’s left hand came up to halt her. Ellie froze when she saw what he had fisted in his right hand. She lunged past his left hand and clawed at his right fist. Alec slid his fist behind him and Ellie scratched his arm as she tried to get at the pills. That was when he knocked her backwards. 

“Ellie, stop!” His eyes were wide open and he had his hand against her chest, holding her off with a strength that he didn’t look like he should’ve possessed at that moment. 

“You already took them,” she realized. The strength abruptly went out of him. His hand left her chest to return to his own as he tried so hard to ease that pain. “Did you just take them? How many did you take?” 

Alec held up two and then four fingers. 

“How long has it been?” Ellie demanded. Alec didn’t answer her. “Alec!” 

“I can’t fucking think or _breathe_ because you keep asking me bloody questions,” Alec exploded. Panting, he tipped his head backwards and flung his other arm across his face. Ellie gave him a minute and then rummaged for her phone. Her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn’t get it out of her pocket.

“I’m calling 999.” 

“No, you’re not.” Alec dropped his arm and rolled his head to look at her. The steadiness of his gaze made her hesitate. His hand moved from his chest to extend across the back of the bench and curl around her shoulders. “You would’ve already done it.” 

The phone fell out of her hand, falling between the slats of the bench. Ellie was too slow and Alec took advantage of the pause to tug her into his arms. He held onto her as if she was the one thing that could cure him. 

“How do you live like this?” she wondered, fighting back tears as Alec’s heart gradually but slowly resumed its usual irregular heartbeat beneath her ear and his breathing became less shallow and ragged. “I could never do it.”

“You get used to it,” Alec said and rubbed his hand over her back. 

“I can’t get used to it,” Ellie sniffed. Alec’s hand stilled, halfway up her spine. “I can’t stand seeing you like this. It kills me every time I find you gasping for breath and in so much _pain_.” Alec released her and Ellie sat up beside him, wiping the tears from her eyes that had fallen in spite of her best efforts to hold them back. Alec sat forward, taking her face between his unsteady hands. He tried to dry her eyes with the sleeve of his jumper, but when he got to her other eye, his hand trembled and he almost took her eye out. 

“Sorry,” he said, cursing under his breath. “Ellie, I’m so sorry.” 

“Just get the bloody surgery as soon as possible,” Ellie sniffled, blinking rapidly as she tried to alleviate the mild irritation Alec had accidentally caused. “I can’t take this anymore,” she said and got to her feet, holding a hand to her eye. She was halfway to the door, when she whirled around and ordered him not to move. 

“I’m going to get my frightened children, and I’m going to pay the bill, and then we’re going home, all of us. If you move a muscle, I will hunt you down and drag you off to the nearest hospital. Did I make myself clear?”

“Does it bloody look like I’m going anywhere?” Alec sniped back at her. The door swung open and a family bustled past them, glaring at Alec who immediately lowered his eyes to his feet. Ellie pasted a smile on her face and reassured the concerned woman that asked _her_ if she was alright that _she_ was fine. Alec’s sad eyes trailed them back to their car, lingering on the tall young woman carrying the baby. 

“She looks like Vicky and Keira,” Alec confessed, saving himself from any further scolding. Ellie left him with his head in his hands again and found him like that when she returned with Fred and Tom in tow. 

Alec stood up at the sight of them and ruffled Tom’s hair with a forced half smile when he asked if he was feeling better. 

“I’m fine,” Alec lied to Tom, steering her son ahead of him and in the direction of the car. But his nervous glance over Tom’s head at Ellie confirmed the truth. Ellie strapped Fred into his car seat and got behind the wheel of the car. She chattered the whole way back to the house and Alec didn’t say a word. Fred and Tom wanted to show Alec something in the nursery. Alec came back downstairs, looking even greyer than he had after Ellie had left him to retrieve her children. 

“Can I stay here at least until the car gets here?” he asked hesitantly, slouching into the nearest chair. 

“Don’t be daft,” Ellie snapped. “You’re in no condition to leave here. You’re staying.” 

“Ellie, I can’t,” Alec refused, shaking his head. He was leaning his elbows on the table and he had the fist with the pills against his forehead. Ellie realized then that he’d never let go of it. 

“I don’t give a damn about what my sister thinks,” she informed him, planting her palms on the tabletop in front of him. 

“Yeah, well maybe you should!” Alec burst out.

“Keep your voice down,” Ellie hissed at him. Her eyes darted toward the doorway and the stairs that led up to Tom’s bedroom. 

“He already knows,” Alec sighed and Ellie’s eyes widened. “Not that we’re-” He shut his eyes and hit his forehead with his fist, explaining, “He knows I’ve been staying over and he threatened to tell your sister.” 

“How?” she sputtered. 

“Come on, Miller,” he practically snarled at her and opened his eyes. “He’s not a child anymore,” he spat, glaring at her as if it was entirely her fault. 

“Don’t you dare put this all on me,” she shot back. 

“You need to talk to him,” Alec said, his voice softening along with his facial features. “But not just about _this_.” It had nothing to do with how Lucy felt about them, Alec was hiding something and apparently her son was too. Alec’s heavy eyelids drooped shut and he hit himself with his fist again, digging the plastic into his brow. 

“What happened today?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Alec mumbled. 

Ellie grasped his arm, yanking it away from his face. 

“Don’t lie to me!” 

Alec blinked at her and then opened his mouth. 

“He’s not handling it as well as he’s pretending to. He’s bottling it up and I think that one day it’s going to get to be too much,” he confessed, tugging at his ear. He let go of his earlobe and covered the back of the hand she still had pinning his other arm to the table. She relaxed her grip as he stroked his thumb over her knuckles and looked up at her with more understanding than she was ready for. “I lost my daughter Ellie, don’t make the same mistake.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Ellie reassured him and Alec nodded. She touched his cheek. “Just give her time,” Ellie suggested but Alec shook his head. 

“It’s been almost three years,” Alec reminded her sadly, focusing on their hands. “I think that’s more than enough time.” Ellie stood and Alec’s head jerked up as she freed her fingers from his. 

“Come here,” she whispered, placing one hand on his shoulder. Alec gazed up at her and Ellie cupped the back of his head, tugging him against her. He was taller than Joe and his head came to her chest. Ellie blocked out that image that was as familiar as the back of her hand. Alec’s arms lifted and his knuckles tentatively traced over her ribs before sliding across her back as he gave himself up to her. His arms wrapped around her and Ellie bent to press her lips to his head. 

“Did you even try to get the jam out of your hair?” she teased him as she ran her fingers through his matted hair. Alec chuckled against her breast.

“You’ve always liked grapes,” he murmured and tilted his head back to look at her with a small smile. There were so many things hidden within the depths of his brown eyes and Ellie wanted to know all of them. 

Alec ruined the moment by twisting away from her and coughing into his hand. His other arm slid off her hip to rest on the table and Ellie noted that he still had that same pill packet clutched in his fist. Ellie reached for his fist and Alec wrenched himself from her. 

“Stop that,” he snapped and attempted to slide his hand beneath the table. But Ellie had already raised one boy and currently had a toddler. She had his fist on the table and his fingers unfurling before he was even aware of what was happening. Ellie removed the blister pack and found two pills remaining. Alec’s palm was cut and bleeding from clinging to them for so long that the plastic had bit into his skin and left a permanent mark of his infirmity. 

“Is there a reason why you’re hanging onto this?” she inquired, genuinely puzzled. 

“They’re the last two,” he explained, snatching it back from her. He started talking so rapidly that he was slurring his words. “I was supposed to take the other ones hours ago but they’re back at the hotel, and I don’t even know if I’ll last the drive home since I didn’t call for the bleeding car-”

“You’re an idiot,” Ellie interrupted him, furious that he’d held that back from her. No wonder he’d had that attack outside of the restaurant and looked like he was about to die on her. She smoothed his sticky hair from his forehead and forced him to meet her eyes. “I’ve got some upstairs because I had a feeling that you’d be back and do something ridiculously stupid like this.”

“Where?” he asked, grasping at the sleeve of her blazer with his scraped palm. Ellie hadn’t realized how dependent his heart was on those drugs until that moment when she looked into his desperate eyes. 

“Upstairs in the bedroom, they’re in the drawer of the nightstand on top of the-”

“You’re brilliant!” Alec gasped and lurched to his feet. He roughly grabbed her face between his hands and kissed her hard, almost missing her mouth. “God, I love you,” he exclaimed as he shoved past without even looking at her. He was stumbling from the room and tripping up the stairs before she remembered how to breathe. 

She never thought she’d hear those three words again or that she would ever want to. Her hand fluttered to her breast and she closed her eyes, trying to suppress the memories of a million “I love you’s” that meant everything to her and nothing at all to _him_. Alec hadn’t meant them either. They were just three small words that he’d blurted out in passing; an expression that had been tossed around so often and broken so many times that it had lost all meaning for both of them. Ellie grabbed the tea towel and wiped at the tiny dark smudge of blood that he’d left on her sleeve. Then she went upstairs, afraid of what kind of state she’d find him in. 

He was passed out on the bed with his shoes on. He’d emptied the whole ziplock bag and once again Ellie wondered how much Alec was still hiding from her, even after everything they’d been through together. She removed his shoes and crawled onto the bed beside him. Cleaning his hand, she ran the other end of the wet tea towel through his mucky hair as well. Alec stirred then and cracked open one eye. 

“Go back to sleep,” Ellie said softly and kissed his forehead. 

“Ellie,” he whispered, his eyes opening. His hand crept up the duvet until his fingers circled her arm. “ _Ellie_.” His sudden tug almost tore her best blazer, but once she was lying on the bed beside him she didn’t care. There was something akin to fear in his eyes as his hand stroked up her arm and caressed her cheek. Ellie let go of the tea towel and held his hand there. 

“I don’t want to leave,” he confessed, closing his eyes. 

“Oh, _Alec_ , you don’t have to,” Ellie lulled him. She kissed him again and stayed awake, long after his breathing had evened out and his limp fingers had dropped from her cheek. 

*

She wakes up alone and feels the empty cold space beside her. Sitting up, her eyes fall on his coat neatly folded on top of the wooden chest. She knows that she can’t put it off any longer. Today, she’ll have to give the coat back to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for everything!


	23. Grey Skies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for the comments and kudos, they always make my day! Are you ready for this?
> 
> Dear SEA, I never had the chance to say goodbye but I know that even I had, we would’ve bitched about avocados or poinsettias instead. Goodbye’s a word that’s too hard to say. Sometimes you have to find another way. You cursed and fought back with humor. I wrote and wound up with _this_.

Ellie woke up alone and rolled over into the empty space beside her. It was still warm. She sat up and peeked inside the en-suite, but the light was off and his shoes were missing. Tip-toeing into the hallway, she poked her head first in Tom’s room and then continued on to the nursery. The door was open a sliver and her heart stirred at the sight of them both together. She was tempted to walk away and leave him alone with his memories, but he felt her eyes on him and looked back at her over his shoulder. 

“Hey,” she whispered, slipping into the room and shutting the door behind her. 

“Ellie,” he greeted her softly as she joined him at the crib’s railing. 

She leaned down to check on her sleeping baby who wasn’t so little anymore. Fred was fine. The man leaning on the railing beside her was not. Ellie was afraid to examine him after what happened yesterday evening, before he collapsed in her bed with his shoes still on. He had his elbows resting on the bar and his arms loosely hanging over Fred’s sleeping form. The tiny stuffed toy that Tom had won for Fred yesterday was in between his hands. If she didn’t know him any better she might think that he was relaxed. He wasn’t.

She combed a hand through his mussed hair and her fingers got stuck in the parts where Fred had left grape jam. He grimaced and she withdrew from him. 

“Sorry,” she apologized, taking in his rumpled jumper and the dark circles beneath his eyes that seemed to be the only color left in his pale face. But the sun hadn’t risen yet and all of the color seemed to have been bleached out of that colorful nursery that she’d worked so hard to build for her sheltered son. “You can use the shower, if you want,” she suggested, hoping that some hot water and soap might be able to help clear away that shadow clinging to him. 

“I already called for a car,” he said without taking his eyes off of her son. “I’ll have plenty of time to shower and change at the hotel before I go.”

It took Ellie a minute to remember. 

“What time’s your doctor’s appointment?” she inquired. 

“Noon.” Alec sniffed and rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. “What time is it now?” He rolled back his sleeve and squinted at his watch, answering his own question. 

“When’s your car coming?” Ellie asked him. 

“It should be here within twenty minutes, well before Tom or Fred wakes up.” His eyes had already returned to Fred peacefully sleeping below them. She stretched out her arms, resting them on the railing beside him. She looked down at her son and leaned her shoulder against his. Alec breathed in deeply and motioned toward Fred. 

“I can’t believe he’s grown so much in the last five months,” he observed. “And Tom must’ve grown at least three inches since the first day I walked into this house.”

“He’s going to be taller than me soon,” Ellie predicted, smiling. 

“They grow up so fast,” Alec said ruefully. “One day they’re sleeping in the nursery, and the next they’re thirteen-years-old, and then suddenly they’re sixteen and they hate you.” He covered his eyes with one hand and his shoulders heaved. 

Ellie tentatively rested her hand on his back. Alec didn’t shrug her off and she moved closer, wrapping her arm around his trembling shoulders and looping her other arm through his. She squeezed his arm and turned her head to kiss his shoulder. Alec drew in another shuddering breath and touched the back of her hand on his arm. His fingers curled over hers. Ellie lowered her head until her forehead was against the woolen fabric of his jumper.

“You’re going to be fine,” she reassured him. Alec’s fingers tightened around hers but he didn’t make a sound. It was several minutes before Ellie dared to lift her head and break that fragile silence. 

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Alec shook his bowed head. Ellie waited a moment.

“You’re not going to back out are you?” she asked cautiously. A strangled sound came out of him that could’ve been a laugh or perhaps a sob. He cleared his throat.

“I’m more afraid of what you’ll do to me if I tried,” he admitted and she heard the fear that he realized he’d revealed. Letting go of her hand, he swiped at his face and straightened his shoulders. Ellie’s hands slid right off of him. 

“It’s just a doctor’s appointment.” 

“No, it’s not Ellie!” he snarled at her. 

His bloodshot eyes met hers for a moment before Fred stirred below them at the sound of Alec’s raised voice. Alec immediately checked himself, hanging his head. They both looked down at her son as he rolled over and went on sleeping. Once again, Ellie found her eyes gradually returning to Alec, starting with the small stuffed animal that easily fit within his hand. He must’ve felt her gaze upon him because he returned the little unicorn to Fred’s crib and stepped away. 

He grabbed his coat off the rocking chair and put it on. She wondered how long he’d been in there, watching her son sleep. 

“You don’t have to go,” she whispered. 

“Five months ago you nearly killed me for staying in here,” he recalled, giving her the ghost of a smile. The smile faded as they both remembered that night and why Alec had been there as well as how she almost managed to send him into cardiac arrest. 

“I found you in my son’s room in the middle of the night. What did you expect?” she asked, struggling to keep her tone light. 

“Not this,” Alec said. “If I’d known then that we’d wind up here…” Ellie waited for him to finish but he didn’t. His eyes flitted away from her, stopping on the crib where her son slept. 

“He reminds me of Keira,” he confessed. He joined her again at the gate that was supposed to keep Fred from wreaking havoc, and protect him from all those awful things that could happen to him if he escaped and there was no one there to catch him. Alec didn’t have to tell her this, Ellie had known for a long time. At one point she’d actually wondered if Fred was the reason he kept coming back, but Fred wasn’t the only thing that anchored him to Broadchurch. Ellie’s hand inched across the railing toward his but he jerked away. 

“I almost forgot.” Patting himself down, he rummaged through his coat and began emptying his pockets. “I know I picked it up,” he muttered. Ellie flashed back to her birthday and the memory of him lit by candlelight, frantically searching for that piece of chocolate he’d stolen from the restaurant and given to her. So, she was unsurprised when he again pulled something small and shiny out of his coat. He dropped it and Ellie scooped the plastic object up off the carpet. It was a gaudy silver thing topped with one of those stick on blue gemstones.

Alec froze and halted his search. Ellie tried to hand it to him but he shook his head. “You can keep that,” he offered, referring to the bauble that Fred had tried to stuff into his mouth yesterday. 

“Oh, Alec, it’s _lovely_ ,” Ellie deadpanned, slipping the ugly ring onto her finger. 

“Fred seemed to think so, he nearly swallowed it.” 

She glared at him but Alec wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the ring on her finger that she’d automatically put on in place of her absent wedding ring. It was nothing more than children’s costume jewelry, but it was still a _ring_. 

“I told you I’d get around to it eventually,” he tried to tease her. Their eyes met and Ellie recalled that day they went out to the restaurant after house-hunting, when for a few minutes they’d pretended that they were just another married couple celebrating a birthday. Ellie tried to laugh it off. 

“I think that I deserve a hell of a lot better than this.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she wished she could have taken them back. She meant them in jest and she was talking about the cheapness of the plastic, the already flaking silver paint, and the fake gem that was covered in glue and already unsticking. It was such a small silly trinket and it had been given to her in the same way those three words had been meaninglessly said last night, but Alec was gazing at her as if she’d broken his heart. 

“You deserve so much more than this,” he told her softly. Ellie knew he wasn’t talking about a bloody toy, but the words she should have said got stuck in her throat. She could babble on auto pilot for hours and had never been at a loss for words until Joe took part of that away from her too. 

“My car’s probably here.” He lowered her eyes to her son and his entire demeanor changed as that paternal instinct took over. Ellie’s heart got jammed in her throat along with those unsaid words, as he reached down to ghost his hand over her son’s curls and touched Fred’s forehead. He leaned over the railing and bent down to whisper something in her son’s ear. 

“What’d you say to him?” Ellie wondered. 

Alec stared at her for a long moment. Ellie thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all when he hesitantly inclined his head toward hers. She closed her eyes as his lips grazed her cheek and skimmed over the shell of her ear. 

“He’ll tell you some day,” he whispered.

Ellie opened her eyes into his. That was all it took. She lifted her hand, fisting it in the wool of his jumper. Dragging him down to her, she kissed him. Alec wavered, but then his hand skated over the small of her back and remained there, urging her closer and closer. Ellie didn’t think there was anything left between them when he ripped himself away from her. He was gasping for breath and he had a white knuckle grip on the railing of Fred’s crib. Ellie wasn’t in much better shape. 

The nursery had brightened around them as the light repainted the orange walls that Ellie had devoted herself to when the rest of her world had gone dark. The soft light was kinder to Alec than the shadows and Ellie dared to hope. He looked at her with messier hair and more color in his cheeks than he had when she first found him. 

“You’ll call me after your appointment,” she said, closing her hand over his. He nodded and Ellie stroked her thumb over the fading bruises on his knuckles. His coat buzzed and Ellie was standing close enough to feel the vibration. Alec sighed and plucked it from his pocket. The phone buzzed again and Alec glowered at the screen. Shoving it into his coat, he turned to her.

“I have to go.” He dropped a quick kiss to her forehead and freed his hand from hers. 

“You’ll come back?” She blurted out before she could stop herself. Behind her, Alec’s footsteps ceased. Ellie kept her back to him, hating herself for how desperate she must sound, but knowing that she couldn’t stop worrying about him no matter how many times he told her not to.

“Alright,” he agreed at last.

Ellie heard his phone buzz again and then the tread of his shoes on the carpet and on the stairs. She wanted to follow him to the door, but she feared that if she did she wouldn’t be able to let him go.

He was quiet, but Ellie still heard the almost inaudible sound of the door shutting. She watched Fred sleep for a little while longer before deciding to take advantage of his slumber and go back to bed. Her room was empty and darker than the nursery but her pillow smelt of grape jam and him. She looked down at the ridiculous ring on her finger and removed it, setting it on the nightstand where she used to keep her wedding ring. The bed was cold but the scent of him warmed her. 

*

The sun had barely risen but the light was spreading, leaving a myriad of colors in its wake. Alec gazed at that never-ending sky until the driver took them out of Broadchurch and further away from the one bright spot remaining in his life. When that sky was behind him, he texted Marty telling him he’d find his own ride to his office and slept the whole way to the hotel. 

Wearily, he trudged to his room and stripped off his clothes, dumping it all into a pile of laundry on the floor of his closet. Halfway to the shower, he remembered the shirt that Fred had ruined. Pulling it out, he stared at purple stains that Fred had left behind and the one half handprint right over Alec’s heart. He lined up his palm and fingers with Fred’s tinier ones and wondered how someone so small could leave such a huge imprint on his heart. It was harder for him to let go of that shirt but it too joined the pile to be washed, although Fred’s finger prints would always be there. 

He showered, shaved and put on a clean and ironed suit and tie, but he knew that it would do little to disguise the impact his illness had had on him since he last saw Marty. He’d called him down to Broadchurch ten months ago when the pressure and stress of the case was creeping up on him and his faulty heart. He was aware now that although he’d solved and survived that case, he wouldn’t survive like this for much longer without the pacemaker. 

Marty was waiting for him at a table outside of a teashop a short walk from his office. Alec spotted the bright blue of his jacket and hesitated. He didn’t want to deal with Marty, let alone the appointment and the diagnosis, but instead of the threats it was the memory of Ellie curled against his chest outside of the restaurant, crying and telling him that she couldn’t take it anymore, that made him take those steps. He pulled out the empty chair and sat down in front of Marty. 

Marty hadn’t changed at all. He might have put on a little more weight, but his hair was still short and grey and his relaxed posture and reassuring blue grey eyes almost managed to hide what a wanker he was when he wasn’t a doctor. Alec had to hand it to him, he was very good at his job and he had kept Alec’s illness a secret and even helped him to hide it from his chief superiors. 

“You’re the last person I expected to see again,” Marty greeted him. “I thought you would wind up dead.”

“I bet you were hoping that was the case,” Alec said, scowling at him. Marty shook his head, his eyes sweeping over him with a clinical scrutiny that made Alec uncomfortable. Alec folded his arms over his chest and looked away.

Two teenage girls walked by the teashop, talking and wheeling their bikes beside them. One of them waved at someone on the other side of the glass and they looked at each other and giggled as they passed him. Alec was struck first by the image of his daughter, and then by the photograph of two young girls on bikes, laughing and riding obliviously toward a violent end. They’d be forever frozen in that photograph, branded into his mind and his nightmares that only Ellie seemed to be able to keep at bay. 

“Alec?” 

Alec blinked and returned to Marty and the table outside of the teashop. 

“What?” he barked. 

Marty sighed. 

“I thought you’d be a wee bit nicer to me since I did get you an appointment on such short notice.”

Alec uncrossed his arms and leaned on the wrought iron table, meeting Marty’s eyes for the first time since he sat down. 

“You and I both know that the only reason why we’re here is because of Iris.” 

Marty lifted his clasped his hands from his lap to the table top. All false reassurance was gone and his gaze was so sharp and critical that it actually hurt Alec. 

“I think we both know Alec that’s not entirely true. It’s been almost three bloody years. You would’ve been here months ago if that was the case.” 

“I needed to solve-”

“Horseshit!” Marty swore and unleashed his anger. “Do you have any idea how much you hurt Iris? She’s always hid her emotions well, but I _know_ that you broke her fucking heart when you left her and Keira. You cut them both off and for some unknown reason she still cares about you. I don’t think you realize how much it’s _killing_ her that you’re such a heartless bastard that you won’t come back or let her in.” 

Alec stared at him, open-mouthed. Marty’s eyes didn’t leave his and it was Alec that collected his jaw and lowered his eyes to the faint discoloration on his knuckles. He balled his hand into a fist. 

“You don’t understand,” he said. “Vicky ruined my life and it was the best thing for them-”

“There’s no excuse for what you did,” Marty interrupted him, bending so that he was almost on eye level with Alec’s bowed head. “I understand that you needed time and that you were protecting your daughter, but it’s been three _years_.” Alec bit down on his lip and dug his nails into his palm until it hurt, but Marty’s eyes still hurt more. “They deserved a choice or at least a better explanation.” 

“It’s too late now,” Alec said, folding his arms over his chest and slouching back in his chair so that he didn’t have to look at him anymore. 

“It’s not too late, but you’re running out of time.”

Alec’s heart skipped a beat, and it took everything in him not to react to that physical indication that only confirmed that he was running out of time. 

“Alec you _need_ to talk to them,” Marty urged him. He leaned closer to Alec and his eyes were boring into him. Alec pressed his tongue against the inside of his teeth and tried to ignore the lump forming in his throat. 

“I call and text Keira every day,” he confessed, staring hard at the sun that was fighting to get through that grey sky overhead. It almost stopped his eyes from smarting from his tenacious grip on a pain that was so much stronger than the constant dull ache in his chest. “She ignores all my calls and rarely texts me back.” 

“Have you told Vicky?”

Alec shook his head. “She suspected that I was seriously ill when I took the job in Broadchurch, but I lashed out at her and I haven’t been able to approach it since.” 

“And Iris?” 

Alec took a deep shuddering breath and dragged his hand down his face. 

“She knew as soon as she saw me,” he told him. It was hard to believe that only a few days had passed since he took Ellie to dinner and ran into Iris. “If I’d called her, Marty, she would have known immediately, you know that. I didn’t want that. I needed Keira to stay with her and if Iris found out about my heart condition...” He trailed off, knowing that he didn’t have to explain it to Marty who knew Iris almost as well as Alec had. 

“Did you at least tell her that it wasn’t you that had the affair but that cheating bitch-” Alec cut him off. 

“I didn’t have to, she knew.” Alec vividly remembered the tears in Iris’s eyes as she took his face between her trembling wrinkled hands. He blinked several times, shoving that memory and the rest of them to the back of his mind. 

“Was it worth it?” Marty asked. Ellie had asked him that too on the boot of her car as the lights of a passing car lit up her face and glittered in her eyes. He’d been in shock and he’d been betrayed by two of the people he’d trusted most. He’d made that decision to take the blame for them and the fall in less than forty-five minutes. He’d never imagined that he’d lose his daughter and be forced to push Iris away. But if it hadn’t been for that terrible decision and the unexpected aftermath, Alec never would’ve gone to Broadchurch or met Ellie. 

“Let’s get this over with.” Alec stood up and led the way back to Marty’s office, even though he already knew what Marty was going to tell him. 

*

The moment Marty closed the door, his whole demeanor changed. Alec had once thought it’d be disconcerting having someone he knew as his doctor (especially someone as annoying as Marty), but Marty became a different person every time he walked into that building. Alec wished that he’d had that ability to compartmentalize when the Sandbrook case shattered him. Dr. Baxter was quick and efficient in his examination and he got all the tests done faster than Alec had expected. An hour and a half later, Dr. Baxter ushered him into his office and shut the door behind him. Alec watched the shift from Dr. Baxter to Iris’s irritatingly observant and smart-arsed nephew that had tormented Alec as a child. Alec had disliked him so much that he’d once _accidentally_ struck and thrown Marty into the side of a car because he’d been so drunk that he told Alec his wife was shagging Cooper eight years ago. Alec had grouped it with the other shitty observations and insults Marty had tossed at him, but for once Marty had been right and if Alec had listened to him then, they wouldn’t have been where they were now. 

Marty took an unbearably long time finding his reading glasses, shuffling through Alec’s file, and clicking through the rest of the results on his computer. Alec was about ready to walk out of there when Marty sighed and closed the file. He took off his glasses and folded them up, lining them up with the plaque at the front of his desk bearing his name and credentials. 

“What’s the prognosis?” Alec asked impatiently.

Marty linked his fingers together and rested his forearms on the mess of scattered paperwork, memos and Alec’s file. He really had gone out of his way to do Iris a favor and get Alec that appointment. Raising his head, he met Alec’s eyes with a stare that was anything but reassuring. 

“It’s not good, Alec.” 

Alec already knew that, Marty had said the same exact words to him ten months ago in a shelter overlooking that hated beach, and ocean, and never-ending sky. It was amazing what ten months and a woman and her two children could do to him and his paradigm. 

“When can I get the pacemaker?” he asked and clasped his own hands to stop them from trembling. 

“Alec.”

Alec was more surprised by the amount of genuine sympathy in Marty’s eyes than he was by the words that followed, roughened by that Scottish burr they both shared. 

“I cannae sign off on this. You won’t survive it.”

Alec thought that the world would close in on him, but he was more prepared for it than he expected. It was as if he knew all along that the end was coming. 

“What are my chances?” he asked, but his voice was detached as if he was going through the motions, asking the questions that he already had answers to. 

“A percentage isn’t going to make a difference Alec,” Marty said, anger warring with that alarming amount of softness in his face. “I hid your illness from your superiors and Iris. I got you invalidated out after you had a bloody heart attack and I didn’t tell Iris about that either. You cannot force me into signing off on a surgery that I am almost certain would kill you.” 

Marty slumped back in his chair, shaking his head. 

“Marty there has to be-”

“You waited too long!” Marty blasted him, eyes blazing. He lunged forward again, sweeping Alec’s file right off the desk along with a bunch of other papers as his fist banged against the surface. “You bloody well know that if you had done it when they wanted to do it the first time, or if you had come to me in November we wouldn’t be having this fucking conversation.” 

Alec’s heart skipped another beat, startled by Marty’s outburst. He’d never known that Marty cared that much about him and Iris…

“You know that this is going to _shatter_ her,” Marty spat, his voice quivering. “And then she’s going to murder me because I knew about your condition and I didn’t drag your stupid skinny-arse up here when I should have.” Marty cursed him and sat back, rubbing his temples. 

Alec’s heart went on beating, but the rest of him was shutting down. His eyes wandered past Marty to the diplomas on the wall and the surprising amount of accreditations he’d earned in the last two decades or so. He should have been feeling _something_ , but it was as if he wasn’t in that room at all and that this wasn’t happening. Alec remembered the moment Vicky had told him she’d lost the pendant, and that it was because she’d been having an affair with Cooper. He’d shut down then too, making that decision with a shocking amount of clarity even if the rest of him had been sinking into a fog.

“Get up,” Marty ordered, standing and grabbing that abhorrently bright blue jacket off the back of his chair. It reminded him of Miller’s orange windbreaker. Alec obediently stood and put on his own coat, only half present in that office as his mind traveled somewhere else with a never-ending sky and grains of sand that he still had hidden in the crevices and folds of his coat. 

“I’m taking you down to the chemist to get the pills that you ran out of along with the rest of the new medications that I prescribed you that you’ll probably stop taking because you’re a bloody moron. And then we’re going to see Iris.” 

Alec allowed Marty to steer him out of his office. Marty told the secretaries that he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, and then dragged Alec outside and into the car park. He opened the car door and pushed Alec into the passenger seat. Alec didn’t remember the car ride that followed, or what Marty was yelling at him about the whole way to the chemist’s, or how long they had to wait, or what the pharmacist was saying because he’d checked out. It wasn’t until Marty took him by the shoulders and shook him that his heart jolted and literally jerked him out of that trance. 

Alec called him a bastard and had to sit down in one of the chairs. Marty said he deserved it and barked at the timid pharmacist to hurry the bloody hell up, before taking the seat next to him. He reverted to Dr. Baxter and launched into a whole spiel, explaining in detail what each drug was meant to do, when to take them and what side effects he could expect. Alec stopped listening to him after the words “ _heart failure_ ”. Once again, Marty had to physically snap him out of it. 

“ _Ow_!” Alec hissed and almost elbowed the wide-eyed elderly woman next to him that he hadn’t even noticed. He muttered an apology and scratched at his chest. 

“Are you trying to kill me?” he snapped at Marty, earning him another look from their audience that included the fearful pharmacist tech. 

“No need. If you’re not going to fucking listen to me then you’re going to wind up killing yourself in a couple of weeks.”

Alec glared at him and unzipped his coat so that he could press his hand closer to his heart. Marty stopped being a prick after that, stole a pen and notepad from behind the counter, and started scribbling everything down; swearing at Alec under his breath and nudging him every few minutes so that he couldn’t zone out completely. Marty folded it up and reached over to tuck it into Alec’s pocket himself. It was then, as Alec was rolling his eyes and telling Marty to get off of him, that his phone rang. He dug it out of the pocket that he always kept it in, but it wasn’t ringing and the cracked screen was dark. Frowning, he searched his coat and pulled out Ellie’s smart phone. 

“Shit,” Alec groaned as Lucy’s name lit up her mobile. Last night, he’d found it underneath the bench when Ellie went back into the restaurant after ordering him not to move. Earlier, he’d tried to give it back to her in the nursery, but instead that stupid toy ring had fallen out of his coat pocket. The pharmacist called his name and Alec shoved the phone into his coat. He was too slow and Marty was sitting too close. His observant eyes hadn’t missed a thing. 

Marty kept his trap shut as Alec signed off on all the medications. He didn’t even register the fact that Marty had swiped his card and paid for all of it. They walked back to the car park and got into Marty’s car. 

“You never did introduce me to your bonny lass…” Marty trailed off hopefully. 

“Sod off.” 

Marty shut up until Ellie’s phone went off again as they were turning onto the main road. This time it was a random number and Alec inwardly groaned.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Marty asked. Alec shot him another glare but Marty was focused on the road for once. It took Ellie’s phone going off a third time (the same random number) for Alec to realize that Marty was taking him in the wrong direction. 

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you to Iris’s so that she can deal with you and your stupid-”

“Turn around,” Alec ordered him, mechanically. 

“Alec,” Marty growled. 

“Turn around,” Alec repeated himself, clutching the phone in his hand. 

“You can’t keep putting this off Alec! She’s worried about you and you’re going to give _her_ an aneurysm if you keep avoiding her-”

“For god’s sake, Marty, just turn the bloody car around and take me back to my hotel!” His voice cracked and he squeezed his eyes shut. “ _Please_ ,” he begged. 

“Okay,” Marty conceded, clearly shaken by Alec’s sudden awakening. Alec told him he was staying in Edgewood and gave Marty the address of the hotel. The rest of the car ride was spent in silence and Alec held onto that remnant of Ellie the entire trip. They were entering Edgewood when Ellie’s phone went off for the fourth time. It was Lucy again. Alec almost picked up to let her know he had it and was going to return it to her sister, but Marty’s voice stopped him. 

“You’re going to see _her_ , aren’t you,” he said quietly. Alec didn’t deny it, staring blankly at Lucy’s flashing name as it vanished and the screen went dark. They stopped at a red light and Marty opened his mouth, but Alec spoke over him. 

“How long?”

Marty glanced at him, but Alec was focused on the blurring red light in front of them. 

“Alec,” he began hesitantly, and Alec could already hear the shift in his tone as he took on that role of a man that was forced to break men and women over and over again with a few words. Alec didn’t know how he coped with it. He still wasn’t over that moment when he destroyed Ellie in an interrogation room with three simple words. 

“You know I can’t predict something like that,” Marty said, sighing. “It all depends on you and how your body reacts to the drugs, and the stressors you might encounter that could trigger an attack that would send you into cardiac arrest.”

“ _Marty_.” Alec’s voice was trembling and yet he couldn’t control it. He took a deep breath and clutched Ellie’s phone in his shaking hand. “How much time do I have?”

Alec could feel the unbearable weight of Marty’s gaze upon him until the light turned green. Marty was forced to look away, but Alec needed an answer and he needed it now. 

“I would get your affairs in order,” Marty suggested, without taking his eyes off the road. He had a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel and again Alec was surprised by how much he cared. “You need to go see Iris and talk to your daughter as soon as possible. I can’t guarantee that these drugs will help for much longer. Anything could set you off. Right now you’re a ticking time bomb. I know you’ve got a temper and you’re too reckless and emotional-”

“Damn it, Marty, just tell me!” Alec exploded, shutting his eyes and struggling to suppress the tremor that was spreading through his entire body and threatening to set off his heart. The car abruptly stopped and Alec opened his eyes to find that they’d reached his hotel.

“You better hurry back to Broadchurch and tell your lovely lass, Lucy, that you’ll be _lucky_ if you last ‘til Christmas,” Marty snapped. 

Alec looked at Marty, and Marty nodded toward Ellie’s phone where Lucy’s name was once again flashing on the screen. 

“Oh, Lucy already knows,” Alec informed him as the hysteria crept up on him. Marty frowned and Alec couldn’t control himself any longer. The irony of it all was too much. He threw back his head and laughed. 

*

It only took Alec fifteen minutes to make a decision and pack up all that was left of his life. He called for a car and went to the front desk to pay the bill and tell them he was vacating the room. The woman smiled and told him to come back again soon. Alec returned her smile, knowing that he would never come back. There was only one place he had left to go. Sitting down outside under that grey sky with his few belongings on the ground in front of him, he wondered why he didn’t feel anything at all. 

He took out Ellie’s phone again, considering the idea of calling Tom to let him know he had the phone and was coming. Instead another thought occurred to him and Alec wondered why it had taken him so long to realize it. He punched in the number from memory and waited for it to ring and ring and –

“ _Hello_?”

For the first time in months, Alec heard his daughter’s voice. 

“Keira,” he breathed, but his voice was so soft that she couldn’t possibly hear him over the sound of the lorry pulling off the road in front of him. 

“ _Who is this_?” she demanded. Alec could almost picture her propping a hand on her hip and flipping her blonde hair that she’d inherited from her mother. “ _Hello_?”

Alec didn’t even know if she’d recognize his voice. He was a stranger to her as much as she was to him; a man that left her voicemails that she didn’t listen to anymore. He thought he had numbed himself against the pain, he was wrong. The wave of emotions he’d been holding back flooded him all at once.

“ _Who the fuck is this_?”

Alec tried to tell her but all that escaped was a choked sob. He’d started to cry and he hadn’t even realized it. 

“ _You’ve got the wrong number_.”

“Wait, Keira,” he gasped, but Keira had already hung up. Ellie’s mobile blinked, showing him that the call was over and that he’d only had thirty seconds with his daughter and he hadn’t gotten in a single word. “It’s your Dad.” 

Alec slid down off the wall he’d been sitting on, knocking over his valise. He hit the pavement and leaned back against the rock solid concrete of that wall that was the only that was holding him up. Covering his face with his hands, he broke down right there in the parking lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't kill me. Not yet.


	24. A Five Day Forecast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Not yet. Thanks for the comments and kudos! The feedback definitely helps and if you send me a pizza I would make Alec and Ellie live to be 350 years old and have 55 kids. Just saying. 
> 
> Dear SEA, most people cry when they get that kind of news. You snuck out of the hospital, got your hair done and went to the finest restaurant in the city before they dragged you back. We all laughed, but you made every last second count.

Alec closed his finally dry eyes against that grey, grey sky and a world that was tainted with shadows. He could already feel the fog creeping in again at the edges of his consciousness as the end of that phone call cemented the fact that the person he loved most was beyond his reach. His mind knew how to protect himself from destroying his own body, and soon enough he’d shut down in a way that no one but Ellie Miller had been able to wake him from. He didn’t know how much time he had left, but he knew what was going to force him to keep breathing for the remaining days, weeks, or months: that frightening but stabilizing numbness. He’d have to tell Vicky and try again to use her as a means to see his elusive daughter one last time, but for some reason he felt like his last chance had already passed. And then there was Iris. He couldn’t explain it, but every time he thought of returning to her and the place he’d once called home, he got scared as if it would be the last front stoop he’d ever show up on, the last step he’d ever climb, the last doorway he’d ever walk through, the last person that ever welcomed him with open arms, and the last place he’d ever go. Alec wasn’t ready to leave yet. 

He thrust his trembling fingers through his hair, digging his nails into his scalp. His mother had been very religious, Iris and her late husband had been quiet but borderline atheists, and his father had been a verbally abusive idiot that hadn’t possessed the ability to believe in anything. Alec didn’t know if he believed in God anymore. After he’d helped recover the bodies of both girls in Sandbrook, he’d randomly pulled his car off into a church parking lot to throw up and then walked in to pray that they’d find the man that did that to them. Instead he’d never found justice and lost _everything_. After that, he never asked for anything and prayed for God to leave him the bloody hell alone. But his second week as DI in Broadchurch had ended with a second child murder that nearly killed him and a fateful meeting with a woman that would be the life and death of him. So, Alec no longer knew who he was bargaining with when he started pleading again with a higher power. 

“Give me one more week,” he whispered, his voice quivering. “ _Please_.” He didn’t know how long he sat there in the middle of the parking lot, shivering beneath that grey, grey sky with his knees pulled to his chest and his head in his hands. He didn’t know what he was expecting; maybe a sign, but eventually he lost his patience. 

“Can you at least give me the fucking chance to say goodbye this time!” he snarled and banged his head against the concrete wall that he’d been leaning against for so long that he’d forgotten it was there. Taking the lord’s name in vain along with several more swears, he thought he’d gotten his answer. 

And then for the first time since he left Broadchurch, he felt the warmth of the sun. 

Alec opened his eyes and shielded them against the glare. He didn’t know if it was a coincidence or not but he’d take it. He got to his feet and picked up the valise. When the driver asked, he told him to take him to Broadchurch for the last time. 

And when Ellie asked him what happened, if he was alright, if his fate had finally been determined, if he was going to follow through with the _only_ thing she’d ever demanded from him, he _lied_. 

*

Ellie realized her phone was missing after she woke up for the second time that morning. She tore apart the entire house before it occurred to her that she may have left it at the restaurant. Ellie put off all the errands she had to run and drove all the way back there. She looked underneath the bench where she was sure she had dropped it, but it wasn’t there. The restaurant was just opening and the disgruntled manager (who obviously remembered her disrupting everyone else’s dinner last night as she frantically searched the restaurant for Alec) was useless. Ellie left her name and number anyway and was halfway home before she realized she’d left the number of her mobile and it wouldn’t do her any good. She called Lucy from the landline, explaining to her what happened. Lucy tried calling it several times but no one picked up. At least she could text Tom and let him know that his mother was an idiot and that someone had probably stolen her mobile. 

It turned out that someone had indeed stolen her phone. But it was the last person she was expecting. Alec showed up on her doorstep with her phone and what she assumed were the few things he still carried around with him as he moved from place to place. 

They stared at each other for a moment. Ellie took in how much he’d cleaned up since she saw him mere hours ago. He’d shaved, combed his now jam-free hair, and put on a new suit and tie, and yet he hadn’t been able wash away the dark circles beneath his eyes that were still suspiciously red-rimmed. Alec wordlessly held out his hand to her. Ellie stretched out her arm and took her phone from him. 

“You left it outside the restaurant last night after I-” He cleared his throat and scratched at the nape of his neck. “I meant to give it back to you this morning but I forgot.”

Ellie thought about the stupid little bauble upstairs on her nightstand that had slipped out of his coat pocket when he must have been searching for her phone. She felt like a moron, but she didn’t think she’d ever be able to forget the look on Alec’s face when he agreed that she deserved better than some silly toy.

“Are you staying?” she asked him.

“If you’ll let me,” he replied, biting his lip.

Reaching down, she collected his overnight bag from the step. Alec followed her inside with what was left. They set his things down on the floor. Ellie asked him how long he was staying and selfishly hoped that he was coming home to her at last.

“I don’t know, tonight and maybe tomorrow,” Alec said vaguely, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. They stood there together in the foyer like they’d done so many times before, but the memory that stood out most was the heated row they’d had over the pacemaker.

“Well?” she asked him, crossing her arms over her chest. Alec’s infuriatingly blank face exasperated her. “When are you getting the pacemaker?” she demanded.

Alec shrugged and unzipped his coat. 

“The bloody doctor ran a bunch of tests,” he said, turning away from her to remove his coat and hang it on one of the hooks. “I have to go back for the results on Monday.”

“Monday?” she echoed, incredulously. “That’s almost a week away.”

“ _Five days_.” 

Ellie was so used to him correcting the littlest stupidest details (an irksome habit that had carried over from his work) that she didn’t pick up on anything except for the fact that it was too long of a wait. 

“I wish it was sooner,” she sighed, eyeing his few belongings lined up against the wall. She wanted to unpack everything and keep him there as long as she could. Alec stuffed his hands into his pockets and studied the floor. He’d gone to the doctor like she’d asked him to, but Ellie was unprepared for the waiting or the rising anxiety that came along with it. She wondered if this feeling in the pit of her stomach was what made Alec avoid his doctor for so long. The idea of _not_ knowing upset her more than anything else. 

Ellie lifted her hand and ran it through his hair, trying to get a better look at his face. Alec expelled a breath and then his arms were around her. She hugged him, resting her chin on his shoulder. 

“It’ll be over soon,” he promised softly.

“I know,” Ellie whispered, no longer sure who was comforting who or if it mattered anymore. They held onto each other until Ellie nuzzled his neck. She brushed her lips over his skin and his hands clenched in her jumper. Pressing closer, she tried to tilt his head more towards hers. Alec seized her wrist, and Ellie was suddenly aware of how tense and rigid his body was against hers. 

“Where are the boys?” he asked quietly. Ellie blinked up at him but Alec’s eyes were shut. 

“Tom’s at the skate park with some friends and Fred-”

Alec’s eyes opened as Fred ran out of the sitting room behind them and latched onto his leg. Alec let go of her and Ellie marveled at how quickly he changed from the troubled man she’d found in the nursery that had turned up on her doorstep a few hours later, into another man entirely. Grinning, he lifted her smiley son up into his arms. Fred wrapped his chubby arms around Alec’s neck and Ellie couldn’t stop herself from smiling at the sight of them together. His eyes met hers, the grin slipped, and then Fred got his fingers into his hair. 

“I’ve got jam in my hair again, haven’t I?” he chuckled as Fred petted his head.

“No jam,” Ellie assured him, laughing. 

“You’re lying,” Alec accused her playfully, but once again something cracked in that mask that every parent learned to master. He shifted Fred in his arms, twisting away from her. 

“I’m not lying,” Ellie protested. Fred looked back at her over Alec’s shoulder and Ellie winked. “It was peanut butter today.”

“Peanut butter!” Fred repeated her, giggling. Alec groaned and Ellie laughed. 

“It’ll be an improvement for you.” She reached up to ruffle her son’s hair and took pleasure in messing up Alec’s as well. Alec scrunched up his nose, making an exaggerated face that made Fred and her laugh again. 

“I’m kidding,” she told him. 

“You better be,” Alec shot back, but he was smiling. 

Unable to stop herself, Ellie wrapped her arms around him from behind and rested her head on his shoulder. Alec stiffened but didn’t shrug her off. She snuggled closer and tried so hard not to think of that other man that had been her partner, her other half, and her rock for fourteen years. As Alec held her son that reminded him so much of his daughter, she wondered if he was thinking of that other woman too. He had something on his mind that was distracting him and was responsible for him cradling her son closer than he ever had before, but Ellie wasn’t sure if she could blame it entirely on his appointment or his heart. 

Fred cuddled closer, burrowing his face in the crook of Alec’s neck. Alec cupped her son’s head, smoothing down his unruly curls that he got from her. His palm lingered on her son’s forehead, pushing back his bangs.

“When did he get this?” he asked suddenly. Ellie leaned closer as Alec gently turned Fred’s head and carded his fingers through Fred’s curls, until Ellie could see the small but visible indication of a bump on the back of Fred’s head. 

“Oh, that.” Ellie examined the bump, outlining it with her fingertips. “It must’ve been yesterday…”

“Yesterday?” Alec asked and his head whipped up. 

“Yeah, he fell off the coffee table,” Ellie sighed. Fred was two and climbing everything. He’d gotten so many little bumps, bruises and scrapes that she couldn’t keep track. She did her best, and so did Tom, Lucy, and whoever else got stuck trying to control her little monster; but there was only so much that they could do. He was a curious and active child who would eventually learn how to keep himself from falling, hopefully soon. 

Fred had had enough and wrenched himself free from their hands. He grabbed a fistful of Alec’s hair and yanked the poor man’s head into a painful angle. 

“ _Frederick Alexander_!”

Ellie reached for her son but Alec lowered Fred to the floor, forcing him to let go. Fred scrabbled at his shirt and Alec lost his balance, landing on his knees as he set Fred safely on his feet. 

“Are you alright?” Ellie asked again. She knelt beside Alec and lunged for her wild child. But Fred immediately snaked his arms around Alec’s neck and clambered up onto his back. Alec wasn’t expecting it and fell forward onto his hands, supporting both Fred and himself on shaky arms and solid palms. 

“Frederick, NO!” Ellie scolded him, raising her voice. “Get off of him!” She tried to grab her wriggling child who already had all of his limbs tightly curled around Alec’s body. Alec suddenly straightened up, catching at Fred’s arm around his neck with one hand and holding her off with the other. 

“He’s fine,” he insisted. “Ellie, I’m _fine_.” They’d gone through the same dialogue so many times that Ellie almost believed him. He grasped at another one of Fred’s slithering limbs and helped him get into a more comfortable position for both of them. 

“It’s alright,” he reassured her. “I’m not going to drop him.” He hitched Fred higher on his sloped back and Fred draped his short arms around Alec’s neck. 

“I’m not worried about him,” she retorted. Her two-year-old was seemingly invincible and fearless, and always got back up after every fall, or bump, or bruise, to attempt something even more daunting. She did fret over him, but she admired him at the same time for that trait that every child lost as they got older. It had taken her a long time to get back up and stop crying after crashing in the wake of Joe’s betrayal, but Alec was partially responsible for lending her a hand and setting her on solid ground. Seeing him manhandled now by her rowdy and careless child, she wondered if his single-minded focus on her and her boys’ recovery had precipitated that sudden decline in his health that had finally forced him to give into her demand for the pacemaker he feared. And if he didn’t make it off that table…

“Quit worrying Miller, I’ve got him.” Alec’s gruff voice snapped her out of her reverie. He did have him, nestled against his suit jacket. Fred’s sleepy-eyed gaze met hers as he peeked at her from where he lay on Alec’s back, content to stay still for one rare moment. Fred felt safe with Alec and Alec wanted to keep Fred there as well. And for the first time she realized that it wasn’t just the reminder of the little girl he lost that attached Alec to her son so strongly. Perhaps, that was what compelled him to carry her son into the nursery during the storm that brought them together. But now Ellie realized that Alec _loved_ Fred and maybe even Tom as well. She wondered if he knew yet how much they meant to him. 

Ellie touched the top of his bowed head and Alec flinched. She blamed it on her son who had latched onto Alec’s collared shirt. 

“Miller, he’s fine,” Alec protested before she could say or do anything. He grimaced as he tried to loosen Fred’s iron grip on his collar. Ellie scolded her son sharply and this time Fred listened. He slid off Alec’s back and scampered into the sitting room. “I had him,” Alec barked at her, but he stretched out his neck and rolled his shoulders. 

“I know.” Ellie reached out a hand to soothe the ache. She got behind him, massaging his shoulders until he grabbed one of her hands in his.

“I’m fine,” he repeated obstinately. Ellie rubbed her hand along his back until he let go of her fingers and stiffly got to his feet.

After a moment, he held out his hand to her and helped her up beside him just as he always had. They looked at each other, hand in hand. Alec ran his thumb over her skin, tracing over her raised veins that would only grow more prominent with the age that was creeping slowly but steadily upon them. As Alec had noted earlier in the nursery, the years flew by and all it took was one blink for your babies that were so dependent upon you to suddenly become teenagers that despised you. 

“I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”

“I had your phone,” he reminded her. Tugging on his ear, he glanced over her shoulder at where they’d dumped his belongings. “And I-” he faltered as his eyes fell upon her. He cleared his throat and refocused on their clasped hands. “The hotel – I only put in for a couple of weeks, and there’s another stupid wedding, and they wanted the room-”

Ellie snorted and used their linked fingers to reel him in. Alec stumbled into her, catching at her waist. 

“You’re lying to me,” she accused him, narrowing her eyes. 

“ _Ellie_.” Alec swallowed hard and his eyes skittered away from her. He relinquished his hold on her waist and untangled his fingers from hers. Ellie seized his tie before he could pull away from her entirely. She yanked down on the blue silk, bringing their faces so close that she couldn’t quite focus on the sudden shift in Alec’s expression.

“You’re so full of-”

Alec stopped her mouth with his. He took her face between his hands and kissed her hard enough to bruise. His long fingers pressed into the flesh of her cheeks and the bone beneath as if he wanted to leave a permanent mark there like the one he’d left on her wrist. Ellie hung onto his tie as he pushed down on her until he was bending her backwards, and she wondered if he was trying to break her. 

He let go of her as abruptly as he’d grabbed her. Ellie stared at him as he backed away from her, wide-eyed. For some reason Friday night flashed through her mind, when Alec had lost control of a car that he knew he wasn’t supposed to be driving and then got upset with her for not stopping him, when he could have killed them both. 

“Sorry,” he apologized, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ellie, I’m-”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What?” Alec looked at her blankly with his knuckles pressed to his lips that were probably smarting as much as hers were. 

“You didn’t get kicked out of your hotel room and you didn’t forget to give me back my phone this morning.” She called him out on his lie and took a step toward him. “You came here because you wanted to.”

“I didn’t steal your phone,” Alec insisted, dropping his hand as she took another step. 

“But you did miss us,” she said softly and closed the distance between them.

Alec stood there with his arms hanging by his sides and Ellie thought that maybe she was wrong. His eyes searched her face and then the crease in his brow cleared. He lightly brushed his hand over her arm, but it was his soft gaze that caressed her and touched her in a way she couldn’t explain. 

“I did miss them,” Alec admitted, motioning toward the sitting room where Fred was getting into god only knew what. “And I-” he paused and his fingers curled around her elbow. For a second Ellie thought he was going to drag her toward him and kiss her again, but his hand unfurled as he nodded. 

“I missed you,” he confessed, and it sounded as if he’d put all that was left of his damaged heart into those three simple words. 

Ellie reached for him, but Alec tucked his hands in his pockets and nodded in the direction of the doorway. 

“I’ll bet you twenty quid that your son got into another box.”

She rolled her eyes and propped her hands on her hips. 

“I’m not stupid, Alec. After you told me what happened yesterday I moved most of it and fixed-” 

She was interrupted by a bang in the sitting room. Alec sniggered as Ellie shoved past him, cursing. The box and its contents were supposed to be out of his reach, but somehow he’d still managed to get his little claws past all the layers of packing tape she’d reapplied. There were packing peanuts all over the ground, a set of scattered cracked bowls, and Fred in the center of it all half wrapped in bubble wrap with strips of packing tape stuck to him. 

“Wasn’t me,” Fred insisted, shaking his head and dropping the bubble wrap. Ellie sighed and pressed her palms to her forehead. 

“You owe me twenty quid,” Alec said from behind her. He had his arms crossed and he was leaning against the doorjamb, smirking. 

Ellie glared at him but his eyes skipped past her to her son. He pushed off from the doorway and picked his way through the debris until he had her son in his arms. Once again, Ellie was struck by the image of the two of them together. Fred beamed at him and said something to him that Ellie didn’t catch. Alec’s face went white, and he almost walked into the coffee table because he was staring at her son.

“What?” Ellie asked him, steadying him before he tripped over it and dropped her son. 

“Nothing,” Alec reassured her, skirting the coffee table and heading for the door. 

“Alec.”

Alec stopped and the pair of them glanced back at her. Ellie tried not to think of the other man that had handled her son with the same ease, and whom Fred had trusted and looked up to in the same way.

“I’m glad you came back,” she told him. Alec opened his mouth, but whatever it was that he wanted to say, he held it back. 

“You still owe me twenty quid,” he reminded her, heading for the kitchen with Fred. 

“I’ll pay you but only if I find the house still standing when I come home,” Ellie bargained with him. 

Alec froze in mid-step. He turned around, his face pale. 

“You’re watching Fred for me, you agreed,” she told him, smugly. “I’ve got a ton of errands to run since I spent the whole morning tearing the house apart and driving back to the restaurant for my stupid phone, when you had it all along.”

“Miller, I can’t,” Alec protested weakly. 

“Sure, you can,” Ellie argued with him, wondering what happened to his usual huffs and pointed reminders that he had once been a father. 

“Ellie, you can’t leave me with him,” Alec tried again. Ellie rolled her eyes, more focused on collecting the cracked bowls that Fred had spent so much time and effort getting to, than the pitch of Alec’s voice.

“Fine, if you’re worried about burning the place down or him getting into another box resulting in another disaster zone, just take him outside,” she suggested distractedly. 

“Outside?” Alec echoed her, horrified, but Ellie was busy cursing her little devil under her breath and trying to figure out how he got into that box. 

“Yeah, take him to the beach or something, it’s not that far and he’ll love it,” Ellie urged him, 

“The beach?” Alec’s voice actually cracked as all of the color drained out of his face. He shook his head. “Ellie, no, I _can’t_ -”

“ _Beach_!” Fred shrieked, nearly splitting Alec and Ellie’s ear drums. “Beach, beach, beach, beach.”

Ellie grinned at Fred and enjoyed seeing the way Alec cringed and vigorously rubbed at his ear as he walked out of the room with Fred on his hip. 

“Have fun!” Ellie hollered after him, snickering. 

Alec _hated_ the beach, the sand, and the cliffs. He deserved it after he allowed her son to make a mess in the sitting room yesterday. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d found it hilarious both times, that Tom had been the one to clean it up, and that Fred had learned the word “shit” from Alec. She was almost certain that something catastrophic had happened as well, but Alec and Tom must’ve shoved it under the rug and made a pact not to tell her. She’d get it out of them eventually. 

It wasn’t until later as she was driving home that she remembered that Alec was _terrified_ of the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m trying to post these quickly. We’ll see how long that lasts… I’m not ashamed to admit that I can be bribed.


	25. Blue Skies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments, kudos and bribery. I’m still open to pizza, hash browns, or anything really. Here we go. 
> 
> Dear SEA, I’d give up everything just to have one more sunlit day, tanning on sea walls with the Macarena on repeat and trying not to drown ourselves or each other in the ocean. Sometimes I’m afraid that it’s like drowning, other days I’d like to think that you’re living it up in a night club somewhere, but there are times when I think that it’s like that day I dragged you on a four hour “adventure” to the end of the beach and we couldn’t go any further. I hope you found a way over those rocks, over that water, and just kept walking to whatever was on the other side, where the ocean met the sky.

The sun was shining in a blue, blue cloudless sky and the sea gulls were circling the beach overhead. Another crowd of them eyed Alec and Fred hopefully from the shoreline where they were fighting over the remnants of someone’s lunch. Alec was reminded of a grey afternoon in a parking lot when a beady-eyed gull had watched Alec war with the truth in Lucy’s warning and his growing feelings for Ellie. It turned out that Lucy had been right about everything. He’d tried so hard to let Ellie go that day and in the weeks that had followed, but he was already too attached and he was powerless once Ellie made her move. Lucy had seen it before he had; that he’d abandon her in the end. And yet Alec still couldn’t find the courage to say goodbye and let her go. 

The beach wasn’t far and Alec hadn’t even bothered with the pram that Fred was rapidly outgrowing. By the time he got there with the uncontrollably excited toddler, he was regretting the decision. But the walk was short and the sloping path down the cliff was manageable (even while trying to hold onto Ellie’s wee beastie) and his heart hadn’t betrayed him. Not yet. 

The distance from the center of town and the noticeable erosion had made this part of the beach unpopular. Alec was glad that it was only a weekday in May, and therefore he and Fred had this small nook entirely to themselves. Fortunately for Alec, the tide had gone out and the ocean was a little further away. Unfortunately for Alec, Fred very much wanted to go into the water and refused to stay away from it. 

Sighing, Alec resigned himself to his fate. He could do this. He’d taken his own daughter to the beach a few times, but Vicky had been there to supervise and she’d been well aware that her husband had an irrational fear of the water. She used to tease him about it, like Miller had in the past. Alec never told them or anyone else that he’d nearly drowned on this same beach, in this same ocean, when his parents had dragged him here on holiday when he was eight-years-old. 

No one had been there to save him even if they could’ve. Alec had been lucky that he was able to swim and that the water had spat him out before he got sucked into that frightening riptide that had drowned a grown man later that same afternoon. They said the man died because he was out too far and he couldn’t swim well, but Alec knew better. He’d felt the power of that ocean, pulling him under, and crushing and suffocating him with the weight of water. The salt water had filled his lungs, and the sun and the blue sky had drifted further and further away from him until they were entirely out of his reach, no matter how hard he tried to fight his way back to that elusive surface. And then a wave had dragged him along that rocky bottom, scraping and bruising his limbs, and slammed him onto that beach. He’d clawed his way up that shore and back to life, shaking and gasping for breath.

It took every ounce of willpower and all of his mental faculties to push that memory aside. Fred threatened to start crying if Alec didn’t take him into that same ocean that had almost taken his life. 

Alec took off his shoes and rolled up the bottom of his slacks. Fred had already kicked off his little boots and was halfway to the water. Alec lunged for him and caught the back of his orange jumper before he got there. He scooped Fred up and waded into the water with him. The waves lapped at the hems of his trousers and he bent to dip Fred’s feet in. Fred shrieked in delight each time Alec lowered him toward the frigid shallow water, only to pull him up at the last second. But Fred was getting too old for that game, and Alec’s arms and back tired of the weight of the growing toddler as Fred’s attention span waned. 

“Swimming!” he whined and almost managed to wiggle free from Alec’s strained arms. Fred didn’t have his swim trunks or the life vest that Alec wished they both had. There were no life guards and Alec didn’t even know if Miller had ever let him go near the ocean, although clearly judging from the boy’s wails and Ellie’s suggestion to take him there, he’d had some happy experiences with water. Alec only wished he could say the same. 

He towed Fred from the water and returned to the beach. Alec gently set Ellie’s son on his feet and tried to calm him. 

“I wanna go in!” Fred cried, tugging at Alec’s shirt and his heart strings. 

“I know you do.” Alec sighed and wiped the tears from the boy’s reddening face. “If your mother was here…”

“Daddy, please!” He flung himself at Alec so suddenly that Alec lost his balance. He sat down in the sand with Fred in his lap and clinging to his neck. “ _Daddy_ , I wanna go in!” Alec stopped breathing as the word sunk in. Fred’s real _Daddy_ would’ve been better off dead. There would be no one to take him into the water, no one to kick around a football with, no one to take him to the skate park, no one to talk to, or do all those things that Ellie would spend the rest of her life struggling to overcompensate for. Alec knew that Ellie was a damn good mother, and that Tom was already becoming Fred’s idol, and that there would be Lucy and Ollie. Perhaps, somewhere down the road or maybe sooner, there would be another man, a man that would take care of them and be everything that Ellie deserved, a man that would be everything that Joe wasn’t and that Alec wasn’t… 

“Fred, I’m not your-” The tightness in his chest became unbearable and tears stung at his eyes. Alec took a deep breath and then another. He looked into those huge watery brown eyes so much like Ellie’s that he wouldn’t have been able to deny him anything even if he tried, and he nodded. 

“If you stop crying,” he bargained with the boy, sitting up slowly, “I’ll take you in the water.”

Fred clapped his hands and almost escaped again. Alec dove for him and dragged him back. He rolled up the bottom of Fred’s trousers like he’d done with his own, and Fred tried to help him with the other leg. It would’ve been comical, had it not been for the fact that Ellie was definitely going to murder him when her child got hypothermia or drowned. 

“You have to hold my hand,” he instructed the boy. “Understood?” Fred nodded and Alec took his small pudgy hand in his own and reluctantly started back down the slanting beach. Fred giggled and took off running, pulling Alec along in his wake. Alec gripped those little fingers tighter and tighter as they neared the water. The cold water shocked them both again. Fred jumped back so fast that he ripped his hand from Alec’s.

Alec jerked the boy toward him and Fred grabbed at his leg with his arms. Alec held him there, allowing Fred to get used to the icy water swirling around their feet. And Alec wished that he could keep him there on the shore, half hidden behind him and shielded from all the dangers that the world waiting for him held. 

That insatiable curiosity and that incredible but terrifying fearlessness that all children had drew Fred again toward the water. He poked his head out, and unwrapping one arm from Alec, he took a tentative step forward. 

“Fred,” Alec growled his name like a warning. The boy froze and his innocent wide eyes met his, destroying Alec all over again. 

“Don’t let go of me,” he told him again, softer. 

He held out his hand and Fred took it. A wave crashed on the shore and the foaming water circled their ankles. The undertow frightened Alec, but Fred grinned up at him and some of that fear went away. 

“Daddy!” Fred pointed at something out on the water, maybe a boat, perhaps a sea gull, or it could’ve been another wave coming toward them, but they just kept coming so it was impossible to tell. Alec felt something give inside of him as wee Fred hopped up and down and leaned closer, babbling incoherently in his excitement. 

“See Daddy?! See?!”

Alec didn’t see anything but the boy in front of him as he knelt down in the wet sand and water pooling around them, heedless of the fact that both of them were going to be completely soaked. 

“I see it,” he told him and dropped a quick kiss to the boy’s head as he ruffled his curls. 

And as Fred threw himself at him with a joyful shriek with the crash of another big wave on the shoreline, Alec held the boy close, and for one moment pretended that he was his father and that he could hold onto him and could protect him from everything for the rest of his life. 

*

Fred wore himself out on that beach and Alec thought that he would wear him out too. But he carried Fred’s wet and slumbering dead weight up the path that seemed so much steeper than when they’d gone down it. Alec stopped to catch his breath at the top of the cliff and made the mistake of looking down at the beach and the rough waters so far below them. He swayed on the spot. That was the only warning he got before the vertigo set in. Stumbling, he started to tip backwards with Fred locked in his arms. 

“ _Oi_! Steady there!” Someone caught at his arms, pulling him and Fred back from that frighteningly close edge. The vision of what could’ve happened to Fred if he’d tripped backwards a few more feet was too much for Alec. Fred was pried from his trembling arms as his knees gave out underneath him and he sank into the long grass. 

Alec cupped his hand over his mouth as Fred started screaming. He covered his eyes, blocking out the tilting land and distant horizon in front of him. Instinctively, his other hand was already searching for those bloody pills that his life was so dependent upon now. 

“Tell me he’s alright,” he pleaded, close to tears himself. 

“He’s fine,” a voice he’d heard before assured him, hushing Fred. “Are _you_ alright?” 

Alec shoved two pills into his mouth. He fisted his hands on either side of him in the brittle sea grass he hated but scratched against his palms, tethering him to the earth that was threatening to slide out from under him. He bit down hard on his lip and willed himself to stay conscious for the wailing child that Ellie had _trusted_ him with, and that he _loved_ now almost as much as his absent daughter. 

“I could’ve killed him,” he whispered, his voice threatening to break. 

“You didn’t. He’s alright, look.” The man shushed Fred and squatted down in front of Alec. Suddenly, Fred was in his lap and had his arms entwined around his neck. Alec’s hands shook as he ran his hand over Fred’s damp curls and his paternal instincts thankfully took over. He soothed Fred until he stopped screaming and crying, and then looked up at the man that had stopped them both from going over that cliff.

Mark Latimer was crouched down in front of him. Alec swallowed and pulled himself together. 

“Mark.”

“DI Hardy.”

Alec hugged Fred to his chest and focused on a spot just beyond Mark’s puzzled face. 

“I-” He nodded and tried to choke the words out, “Thanks for-” He couldn’t finish and dropped his eyes to the swaying sea grass that surrounded them, and then to the toddler clinging to his shirt. 

“Is that El’s son, Fred?” Mark asked, after sitting and giving Alec a minute to compose himself. 

Alec met Mark’s eyes, realizing that Mark had used Ellie’s old nickname. He nodded again and smoothed his hand over Fred’s curls that were so much like his mother’s. The boy was already drifting off again, exhausted by the outburst on top of the long day he’d had ripping open boxes, creating chaos, and running in and out of an ocean that Alec hadn’t wanted to follow him into. But he had. He’d done it for Fred. 

“So,” Mark cleared his throat, “You and _her_ -”

“No,” Alec cut him off quietly, already knowing what he was asking. 

“But-”

“ _No_.” Alec stared unblinkingly at Mark until he lowered his eyes to Fred. It wasn’t a lie, not really. It wasn’t until last weekend that they’d really crossed that line that they’d been toeing for so long, and they’d never discussed what exactly it was that they were doing. Besides, Alec would be gone by the end of the week and Ellie would be leaving Broadchurch by the end of the month. 

“You are sick, though, aren’t ya?” 

This time it was Alec who couldn’t compete with Mark’s unwavering gaze. His eyes moved beyond Mark to the sun that was directly ahead of him now, a reminder that the day was slipping away and that soon there would only be four left. He didn’t say anything but that silence spoke louder than words. 

“Chloe told me that she ran into you and Fred and Ellie,” Mark said softly and leaned forward to brush away a piece of grass from Fred’s hair that had probably come from one of Alec’s hands. Mark held onto that piece of sea grass, twirling it between his thumb and index finger as he turned his eyes toward the sun behind him. “I’m not sure if Beth will ever be able to let that go, but _I_ know that if El had seen anything she would’ve stopped it.” 

“You should tell her,” Alec said. He was so tired of this stupid small town and all the people Ellie loved that had turned their backs on her or had stayed mute, forcing him to pick up the pieces, even though he couldn’t piece himself back together. 

“You know I can’t,” Mark sighed, squinting into the sunlight. He turned towards Alec, his eyes still narrowed. “Obviously, you haven’t been able to tell her either.” 

“Tell her what?” Alec asked, frowning. Mark motioned toward the toddler asleep in his arms. 

“I doubt she would’ve entrusted you alone with her two-year-old if she knew how bad off you are now.”

Their eyes met again and Alec couldn’t have denied it even if he had tried. He drew in a shuddering breath and stroked the back of Fred’s jumper that was almost the exact shade as Ellie’s obnoxiously bright jacket that he’d actually grown fond of. 

“I came back to say goodbye,” he confessed. He didn’t look at Mark. He didn’t have to. They sat there together as the sun sank a little lower in that never-ending sky that stretched out beyond them. 

“Thanks for what you did for Danny.” Mark sniffed, before adding, “I know you had a heart attack and you dragged yourself out of that hospital-”

“Don’t thank me,” Alec interrupted him, his voice quivering. He inhaled sharply and his voice was steadier when he continued. “I had Miller to lean on, without her I never would’ve finished that case and got your son the justice that he deserved.” He looked straight at Mark, no longer caring that both of them had suspiciously watery eyes. “Ellie _loved_ your son. She wanted him to rest in peace and wanted to get you the closure you needed just as much as I did.” Alec held his gaze for a long moment and then looked into the glare of that burning star a billion miles away until he couldn’t anymore. Fred shivered and snuggled closer to him. Alec kissed his forehead as a shadow crossed between him and the sun. 

“Come on.” Mark hauled him up and set him on his feet, careful not to jostle Fred. They walked through the tall grass in silence until they reached the road and their paths diverged. 

“Chloe said you had a daughter her age,” Mark said out of the blue. Alec stopped and stared at him. 

“Her name’s Keira,” he told him.

Mark reached out and squeezed his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry, Hardy.”

Then Mark walked away and Alec carried Fred home. 

*

Months later, Ellie catches her giggling son and lifts him up into her arms. She tweaks his nose and looks around the kitchen. It’s been months but she still can’t get used to it. The house is nice and cozy and perfect for the three of them. But Ellie stares at the empty fourth chair at the table and the black coat that she draped over the back of it so she won’t forget it, and she thinks about a night months ago when she thought she’d found the partner that she’d lost. 

“When’s Daddy coming home?” Fred asks her for the hundredth time. 

“Not today,” Ellie says and forces a smile. 

She doesn’t know how to tell her three-year-old what happened to his father or the man that hadn’t meant to take his place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not go swimming if there is a rip tide warning. It’s probably geographically inaccurate but I don’t care. Still open to bribery, the more creative the better. And thanks to nannyogg/mykelara for listening, inspiring scenes like the Alec/Fred beach one, and reading like 85 rough drafts of every chapter when I freak out! Next chapter should be up soon!


	26. Lightning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **PREVIOUSLY ON _WHEN THE STORM BREAKS_** : A few little things mentioned in earlier chapters might be important in the near future. In Ch.21 Alec had a major episode while watching Fred for Ellie (so that she could go on her interview) and Tom found him. Tom and Alec then had a little disagreement about WHY Tom skipped school and there was some manipulation and a secret pact. A book found in Ch.14 and an implied trigger was referenced in that chapter as well. In Ch. 23 Alec got some bad news from his doctor, Marty, and went back to Broadchurch instead of to their Aunt Iris’. Alec then lied to Ellie and gave himself 5 days to say goodbye. Oh, and **SPOILER ALERT** : Alec and Ellie sort of _like_ each other A LOT, lol. 
> 
> Thank you for the feedback and the bribes and the pleas you made for Alec’s life! I’m taking it all into consideration and seriously considering shipping Alec off to _New_ England instead… Kidding! I hope this chapter makes up for the end of the last one! 
> 
> Dear SEA, it’s going to be a very long drive, but no matter how many of your crappy mix CDs we listen to or how high we turn up the volume it still can’t drown out the fact that you’ll never be there waiting for us when we come home.

Ellie took the long way home. The errands hadn’t taken much time, but she’d decided to take advantage of Alec’s presence in her home and gone to Edgewood to tie up some loose ends required for the move and the possible new job. In spite of Alec doing everything in his power to make sure that his DS got suspension with pay and cleared of any charges that could’ve been made after it came to light that her _husband_ had murdered Danny, Ellie had to undergo a lengthier background check and a lot more paperwork before she could be officially offered the job. Once again, Ellie had to wonder what exactly Alec had done that had earned Worthington’s respect and made the tight-lipped DI even _consider_ Ellie for the job, let alone go through the complicated process of getting her hired. 

She’d texted Alec and he’d texted her back that Fred was asleep, Tom had come home, and that they were fine. Ellie didn’t know why she didn’t rush home. Maybe, she liked the fact that she had some time to think without having to worry about a busy toddler, a growing teenager, and a moronic man that took care of her and her boys but didn’t seem to care about his own wellbeing. 

Ellie wasn’t an idiot. Although it was frustrating, it made sense that Alec wouldn’t get the results until Monday and that a date for a pacemaker wouldn’t be set until then, but there was something that he wasn’t telling her. She knew he was scared he wouldn’t survive the operation and that she’d probably have to drag him to the hospital, if that woman Alec was avoiding didn’t do it herself. Ellie knew from the way that Iris looked at Alec in the restaurant and the way that Alec vehemently defended her, that Alec and Iris did love each other, but Alec was putting off visiting her and acting like she’d keep him in a cage. Ellie couldn’t understand why. His behavior earlier had confused her too. They still hadn’t discussed whether they were going to tell her sons that they were in a relationship, if you could even call it that. Every time she took a step forward, Alec seemed to take a step back. But that didn’t explain why he’d been so paranoid about Fred. Or why when he kissed her he’d acted like he’d lost control of a careening vehicle, although he’d had no trouble at all kissing and touching her over the past few days. The way he kissed her earlier had been _different_ , but that still didn’t explain his horrified reaction. She brooded over it for most of the ride home, even though she told herself that she was going to take a few minutes not to worry about any of them. 

It was dark by the time she hit Broadchurch and drove the familiar winding road that passed over the cliffs. That was when she remembered Alec’s fear of the ocean. Now, she felt like a complete arse for teasing him. Quietly, she slipped into the house with an apology on her lips, but the sound of raised voices in the kitchen made her pause. 

“I said I would, didn’t I?” The thickening of Alec’s Scottish accent betrayed his ire. “But you’re going to have to trust me unless you can come up with something better than that.” She was surprised when her son’s changing voice answered him. 

“Well, you could always tell her-” Tom dropped his voice so that she couldn’t hear him. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one. 

“What?” Alec asked, forcing Tom to repeat something in a voice still too muffled for her to understand. Whatever it was, it left Alec at a loss for words. After a long moment, he coughed and cleared his throat. 

“Tom, I think that’s something that you might want to talk to your mother about.” 

Tom muttered a response that was once again too low even for Ellie’s sharp ears. She toed off her shoes and crept closer. 

“I’m not going to tell her about _that_ ,” Alec snapped and then checked his temper, continuing in a calmer voice, “But I still think that you need to talk to her.” 

“You can’t tell her!” Tom’s voice cracked. “You swore you wouldn’t.” Ellie walked in just in time to see Alec lean back in his chair and drag his hands down his face.

“God, Tom, do you have _any_ idea-”

Tom kicked him under the table. Alec jerked up and noticed Ellie standing in the doorway. They both stared at her as if they were immensely guilty of something.

“What’s going on?” she asked, looking from one to the other. Alec glanced at Tom. Her son’s face turned crimson and he ducked his head. 

“I’m going to bed,” Tom announced. He tried to rush out of the kitchen, but Ellie caught him before he could escape. Behind Tom, Alec silently shook his head at her and mouthed, “Don’t ask”. Ellie was suddenly struck again by the little reminders that Alec had been a father _and_ a husband once. She hesitated, not sure if she could trust Alec or her son at the moment, but reluctantly kissed Tom’s cheek and tousled his hair. 

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” she said, letting him go. “I love you,” she called after him as he dashed up the stairs. She thought she heard a “Love you too” before the door of his bedroom clicked shut. 

Ellie whipped around to glare at Alec. If he didn’t tell her she was going to sit them _both_ down for an interrogation that they’d never forget.

“You better have a really good explanation for that,” she hissed. 

“Will you at least give him five minutes to go to sleep before you start yelling at me and he hears us?” Alec hissed back. 

Ellie scowled at him, but she knew he was right. It was hard to believe that it had been almost a year since she’d lost her partner. Over the last five months, she and Alec had spent a lot of time together, and during that time she’d gotten a few glimpses of that side of him. But it was still strange for her to see Alec in that role and that she was even considering him as _her_ partner. Ellie froze halfway to the table. 

“What?” he barked at her. He had his forearms folded on the table and his untidy hair falling into his eyes. “ _What_?” When she didn’t answer, he pushed his bangs off of his forehead before she could do it for him, and nervously eyed the doorway. “Look, I’ll tell you everything just sit down for a minute and eat something,” he whispered and gestured to the chair next to him that Tom had vacated. 

She sat down and discovered that the table was covered in takeaway boxes. Alec pushed three of them toward her along with plastic utensils, a bottled water, and some paper napkins. 

“How much food did you get?” she asked, her jaw dropping at the stack of takeaway boxes. 

“Don’t look at me,” Alec said, holding up a palm. “Tom’s the one that ordered. I only paid for it.” 

“It must’ve cost you a fortune.” Ellie counted a pizza box and seven takeaway containers for two adults, a teenager and a toddler. 

“I didn’t ask,” Alec said flippantly. “Don’t really want to know.” 

“Was this necessary?” Ellie asked, pointing to the three boxes that were apparently saved for her. Alec rubbed at the nape of his neck. 

“I didn’t know what you wanted,” he admitted sheepishly as she started opening the boxes. “There’s more if you want, but Tom and Fred already took a bite out of or ate half of the rest of that stuff. I had to stop them from getting into everything.”

Ellie recalled that night so long ago, when he’d shown up on the doorstep of her last home bearing flowers, wine and chocolates. He seemed almost as anxious now as he had been then. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to be, not with her, but she didn’t know how. 

“You don’t like any of that stuff?” He was bewildered. “Tom said you did, and I know I’ve seen you eat fish and chips, but if you don’t want it I can get you something else.” He snatched one of boxes but Ellie stayed him with a hand on his arm. 

“Fish and chips are fine,” she assured him. 

“Then why aren’t you eating it?” he snapped. 

“Have you eaten?” she snapped back at him and followed his eyes to an open box of some sort of salad that looked like it’d barely been touched. Ellie passed him a plastic fork. “Eat,” she ordered him. Alec sighed, but accepted the fork and reluctantly tugged the takeaway box toward him.

They passed the next fifteen minutes in silence. Ellie was consciously aware of how much time passed and how much Alec ate. When he’d cleared half the box, Ellie was satisfied enough to bring it up. 

“So, what’s going on between you and Tom?” she asked softly, nibbling on the last of her chips.

Alec toyed with his fork as he swallowed another bite. Ellie waited, but her patience had been stretched too thin. She smacked his arm and caught a flash of that guilt before that blank stare settled on her. 

“What did Tom have to talk to _me_ about?” she demanded. “He was mumbling and I couldn’t hear-”

“Oh, _that_.” Alec tossed his fork into the styrofoam container and wheezed a laugh. 

“What’s so funny?” she asked him, shoving her empty box aside so that she could fold her arms on the table. 

“You have to swear not to say anything to him,” he said with a gravity that didn’t reach his eyes or the grin that he couldn’t stop from curling at the corners of his mouth. 

“Fine,” Ellie agreed. 

Alec took his time closing the takeaway container. Ellie was about to smack him again when she noticed that Alec’s neck and cheeks were flushed. 

“Tom, well, he-” Alec cleared his throat and made a face that strongly resembled her thirteen-year-old’s. 

“Out with it!” Ellie hissed. 

“He got his first kiss,” Alec blurted out, loudly. They both looked at the open doorway. Ellie waited a moment and then drilled him for details, careful to keep her voice low. 

“When? Where? Why didn’t he tell me? Who was it?”

“And you used to complain about me for asking questions too rapidly,” Alec sighed. Ellie swatted his arm again and he rolled his eyes. 

“I don’t know, Miller. He said it was at the bonfire over the weekend and that it was some girl, Welch, or Walsh, or was it Wilson?” Alec frowned as he tried to remember. 

“Oh, my god, you already forgot her first name?” Ellie gaped at him. Alec blinked at her and Ellie buried her head in her hands. When she lifted her head, Alec was still perplexed. 

“Miller, he’s a teenage boy,” he explained slowly. “He wouldn’t have even told me if it wasn’t for-” He stopped in mid-sentence. 

“If it wasn’t for what?” Ellie repeated, straightening up and scrutinizing him. Alec slouched in his chair and ran his tongue over his teeth. Sighing, he met her gaze. 

“Ellie, he can’t talk to his father,” he reminded her. His eyes rested on her with that same softness that had stroked over her earlier after he admitted he’d missed her. Now Ellie wondered if it was pity. But Alec had never pitied her and had told her this several times over the course of their twisted companionship. 

She couldn’t handle it. Pushing her chair out, she stood. 

“Where are you going?” Alec asked, alarmed and concerned.

“I’m going to check on my children.” 

“Right.” Alec nodded and sat back in his seat. Ellie could feel his soft gaze following her out of the room, up the stairs and all the way into her children’s bedrooms and her own. 

She expected his footsteps behind her as she entered the nursery, but he left her alone and gave her the space that she needed. She didn’t know how long she spent watching Fred sleep, but her innocent son gave her a kind of peace that she couldn’t find anywhere else. She would hate Joe for what he did to her, to Tom, to Fred, to Danny, to the Latimers, and even to Alec. And Tom would always be tainted by the memories of a father that must’ve loved him on some level, although Joe had been willing to risk Tom too when he pursued someone the same age as his own son. Ellie could understand Joe leaving her, but leaving Tom and Fred was unacceptable, and then the murder and those photographs… Ellie boxed those memories up and with one last kiss, she turned away from her baby who wouldn’t remember or ever know his father. She was determined to shelter Fred from the truth for as long as she could and wished she could do the same for Tom. 

Tom was asleep too, or pretending to be. Ellie could never tell anymore. Tom was withdrawing from her more and more with each passing day. Ellie had some vivid memories of when she was a teenager and she knew that it was a normal rite of passage that every parent should expect, but Ellie still worried about him. Joe had been so close to him and had been so good with him that Ellie wished that he was still there to talk to Tom about the things that she couldn’t. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, Ellie felt like she was going to be sick. Ducking out of the room, she made it all the way to her en-suite before she started gagging. She grabbed her toothbrush and brushed her teeth so vigorously that she almost made her gums bleed. And yet all that mint wouldn’t rid her of that bad coppery taste that the memory of Joe always left in her mouth. 

She went downstairs and found the takeaway boxes gone and Alec sitting at the cleared table. A long time must’ve passed because he had his glasses on, and he’d dug out her laptop and had it open in front of him.

“What are you doing?” 

Alec looked up at her and once again something akin to guilt flitted across his face. After a moment, he beckoned to her. His eyes returned to the screen as she approached the table. Ellie rested one hand on the back of his chair and the other on the table next to the keyboard. She couldn’t help but think of the many times she’d similarly positioned herself in his office, or the way Alec had perched himself on the edge of her desk scattering papers when he left, or the way he’d ignored all laws of personal space when there was something he needed to see on her computer or something he wanted her to see. Sometimes she missed her old boss, even if he’d been a complete knob. She often wondered what it would’ve been like if they could’ve continued to work together. 

“Miller, pay attention!” he snarled at her and Ellie took it all back. “Were you even listening to me?” he asked, twisting in the chair to look at her. 

“No,” Ellie admitted, feeling like a DS that had just been scolded by her grumpy cantankerous boss. 

Alec sighed and shut the laptop. Hunching over the table, he took off his glasses and held them in his hand. He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Ellie laid a hand on him and he threw his glasses across the table. She stepped back as he jumped up from his seat and stalked away from the table. 

“Alec.” 

Alec swung around and crossed the kitchen in three steps. 

“Listen to me, Miller,” he ordered, his voice steadily rising with every word that followed. “Clearly, you don’t care, but I’ve done all that stupid research that’s such a waste of bloody time that no one wants to do. I’ve tried to make it easier on you and the boys. I’ve got a list of the schools for Tom, the child minders for Fred, the removers if you don’t already have one, and all those stupid little things that you might want to know-”

“I didn’t ask you to do that!” Ellie interrupted him. 

“I did it because I _wanted_ to!” Alec shoved the laptop halfway across the tabletop and sat on the edge of the table in front of her. “I _want_ to help you because I-”

“Lower your voice!” Ellie shushed him. “If you wake up my sons-”

“I won’t be here!” Alec’s voice echoed through the kitchen and in her ringing ears. She stared at him until he tugged on his ear and his eyes wandered. “Ellie,” he sighed her name and folded his arms over his chest. “I-I don’t know what’s going to happen.” He looked up at her then and Ellie saw a raw fear in his eyes that she’d never seen before. She wanted to reach for him and tell him that everything was going to be fine, but they’d told each other that so many times that Ellie wondered if those words were starting to lose their meaning. 

“Alec, no one ever knows what’ll happen,” she said quietly. Alec gazed at her for a long moment and then lowered his head. “I know you’re scared,” Ellie went on softly and stretched out a hand. “Alec, I’ll go with you to the appointment on Monday-” 

“ _No_.” Alec’s voice was sharp enough to hurt, but the way he flinched and scooted out from under her hand, hurt more. 

“You’re missing the point!” he spat, shaking his head. “You’re not getting it. If I’m not here, I want to be sure that you and the boys are taken care of. For my own piece of mind, I _need_ to do this.”

“It’s not your responsibility!” Ellie broke in but he was already working himself up again. 

“Do you think I bloody care whether it’s my responsibility? After everything we’ve been through, do you really think that that’s why I’m still here?” he asked and shot up from the table. He towered over her and once again the thickness of his Scottish accent was an indicator of how upset he was with her. “I’m here because I _care_ about all three of you, and I _care_ about what’s going to happen to you when I can’t be there anymore, because you and I both know that there is a possibility that I might not be around for much longer-” 

“Calm down!” Ellie hissed, looking over her shoulder. Alec shook his head, his jaw clenched and his chest heaving. But when Ellie grabbed hold of his arms and pushed him down onto the table, he didn’t resist. 

“Ellie, I can’t-” He held her arms and her gaze. Ellie could deal with his temper, but his raw fear and that almost feral desperation was something she didn’t like and didn’t understand. “Ellie, I don’t know if I can do this.” She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she knew if he kept going on like this he was going to set his heart off. Hushing him, she dragged his head against her chest, muffling the rest of his incoherent words against the front of her jumper. 

“Relax,” Ellie soothed him, running her fingers through his hair. “Alec, you need to _relax_.”

Alec’s words dissolved into her chest as she whispered the soft strings of syllables that she had used time after time to comfort her own children. His fingers scrabbled at her sides but his arms never looped around her. Gradually his breaths evened out and his hands fell to her hips. He pushed her back a step and leaned against the stained wood, but he never let go of her. 

“Relax, Alec,” she whispered again. Alec looked up at her, his eyes glassy and slightly out of focus. He blinked and refocused on her. 

“What’d you say?” He frowned. 

“ _Relax_ ,” she urged him, scraping her fingernails over his scalp as she combed her fingers through his messy hair. 

“You want me to _relax_?” he repeated her as she tilted his head. His hands tightened on her hips, pulling her a little closer. 

“Yes, Alec, you need to relax.”

Alec stared at her and then inexplicably started sniggering. 

“What’s so funny?” she demanded, tipping his head back further so that he was forced to meet her eyes. Alec grinned and sat up suddenly, forcing Ellie backwards. Ellie was about to persist, but Alec wore the rare grin well and she wished he would wear it more often. 

“Do you want to _relax_ with me?” he proposed. His hands left her hips, sliding over the small of her back until his fingers interlaced and locked together. Ellie wondered if he’d lost his mind, and then finally, she got it. 

“Seriously?” she snorted. “That has got to be the worst proposition I’ve ever heard.” 

Alec barked a laugh and Ellie couldn’t help but smile. She rolled her eyes, but let him laugh until he started coughing and abruptly stopped. Ellie was about to get him a glass of water but the coughing petered out, replaced with that familiar wheezing laugh. Shaking her head, she rested her hands on his shoulders. 

“No wonder why I’m the first woman you’ve been with since Vicky,” she teased him. Alec’s laughter died in his throat and his head snapped up. Ellie’s smile faded as their eyes met. 

“I haven’t been with you yet,” he reminded her, his voice rough and hoarse. She blamed the sound and the shiver that it ensued on the laughter and the coughing, but he was looking at her in a way that he never had before. 

One of his hands left the small of her back, hovering near her face. He lightly traced her profile with his fingertips, searching her eyes for something. He must’ve found it because when Ellie leaned toward him, he kissed her. Ellie braced herself, expecting the same sudden loss of control she’d experienced earlier, but Alec cradled her face and took his time. At first…

Plunging his fingers into her hair, he suddenly tugged her closer. She snaked her arms around his neck as his hand stroked over her jumper and then slipped past all of her layers until his palm was pressed hard against her spine. She fumbled with his shirt and his hand sunk into her curls, breaking her hairclip at the same time she tore the top button off of his shirt. Alec’s glasses slid off the table. That was the only warning they got before the whole piece of furniture started to tip under the combination of their weight, teetering on that edge they’d been toeing for so long. 

Ellie yelped, hopping backwards. Alec leapt up and caught at the corner tabletop before it went down. She lunged forward to help him stabilize it and stopped the laptop from going over. They stood there, panting with their palms planted flat on the wooden surface that was once again sturdy and solid beneath them. 

“Are you alright?” They asked each other at the same time. Alec snorted and Ellie laughed. His grin reappeared as his shoulders shook with another round of sniggering. She laughed until he shushed her, barely able to control his own mirth. 

“Miller, you’ll wake up the kids,” he hissed, peeking over his shoulder at the open doorway. Ellie threw her arm around his shoulders and giggled into the crook of his neck, almost causing him to tip the table over again. “ _Miller_! Will you shut up?” His whisper carried absolutely no threat, because he was grinning and his eyes were so bright. 

Ellie’s giggle left her along with her breath. She didn’t need to hunt through his phone again for a photograph of him and his daughter from years ago; she finally saw Alec Hardy smile like he had before _that_ case, before he lost his daughter, before he got sick, before he came to Broadchurch and back to her. It was gone as soon as he drew himself up to his full height, but Ellie knew she’d never be able to forget it. 

They gazed at each other, all signs of laughter gone, replaced with something else. Ellie held out her hand to him and he took it, his fingers curling around hers. She looked him in the eye, dead serious. 

“Do you want to _relax_ with me?”

Blushing, Alec rolled his eyes and Ellie chortled softly. His flushed face cracked and she thought she caught a tiny glimpse of _that_ grin. It was enough. 

“I can be quiet,” she whispered, running her thumb over his knuckles. The bruises were only visible if you knew they were there. He was healing and she was too. Months ago, maybe even a few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have considered herself emotionally strong enough to even think about this. Sidling up to him, she lowered her voice and stood on tiptoe to reach his ear. “I can be very, _very_ quiet,” she murmured and squeezed his hand. Alec’s fingers tightened around hers.

“I doubt that,” he whispered. “Half the time I can’t get you to shut up.”

“You didn’t try very hard,” Ellie retorted.

Alec studied her and then dipped his head to slant his mouth over hers. As he parted her lips, Ellie was rendered speechless, temporarily. 

“Better?” he asked her, smirking. 

Ellie nodded, breathless.

“I can try harder,” he promised huskily, hitting the light switch as they walked out of the kitchen together. Ellie led him through the dark house, but her nerves got the best of her when they got to the stairs. She tripped over the second step and almost took Alec down with her. 

“Sorry,” she apologized as they separated to get their bearings. 

“I should be apologizing,” Alec sighed and leant against the wall as Ellie grasped the railing. Ellie wished it wasn’t so dark so that she could see his face. “Ellie, I’m not sure-”

“Oh!” Ellie gasped and felt like a complete moron for forgetting about his heart condition. Mortified, she babbled, “Alec, we don’t have to - I’m not expecting you to - It doesn’t matter-”

“It matters to _me_.” Alec found her hand in the darkness and dragged her back to him. She fell against his chest and he held her there, supporting them both against the wall.

“I want to take care of you, Ellie,” he breathed, burying his fingers in her hair.

“Alec,” she sighed, “You don’t need to-” She broke off as Alec touched his lips to her throat. It was one touch, he’d probably done it several times before, but he kept his lips there, and Ellie knew that tonight he was going to leave a mark like the one he’d left on her wrist and that she was going to let him.

“ _Alec_ ,” she whispered, but her body was trembling, already giving in. Alec hushed her again and they continued their slow and unsteady trek to her bedroom, this time with him leading her.

He was too gentle and too slow as he undressed her and gradually worked his way lower and closer to that precious part of herself that only one other man had seen. It was as if Alec wanted to take every single second to memorize every inch of her. Ellie thought it was sweet, but after almost nine months of _knowing_ each other, two months of unresolved sexual tension, and one whirlwind weekend building up to that moment, she was impatient. Ellie was desperate to exorcize the memory of that other man that she still wondered if she could’ve stopped if only she’d been a little bit better. Alec could have everything and all the time he wanted from her, but not right now. Not tonight. Ellie wasn’t thinking straight and it was entirely his fault. She forgot herself and him. 

“I’m not going to break,” she panted, frustrated. 

“I’m not worried about _you_ ,” he growled, his eyes dark.

“Prove it,” she challenged him. 

He did. 

All it took was one word, her name on his lips, and she _broke_. 

*

“Thought you said I couldn’t break you?” Alec was breathing almost as hard as she was and his fingers trembled as they brushed back her limp and sweat soaked curls. 

“You didn’t,” she insisted and then registered the smugness in his voice. “Wanker!” she cursed, weakly lifting an arm to hit him. Alec caught the limb, pinning it to the bed over her head. She couldn’t stop her boneless body’s instinctive reaction to his touch. Chuckling, he bent closer. 

“You’re _astounding_ , Miller, not even thirty seconds ago you were calling me everything from God to Jesus Christ.”

“You fucking-”

“Language,” Alec chided her, reminding her softly, “Your sons are asleep on the other side of the wall.” His breath tickled her ear and Ellie grasped at his shirt, tugging him down on top of her. She slid her hand between them, fumbling for his belt buckle. 

“We’ll see if _you_ can stay quiet,” she whispered but once again Alec had the upper hand, taking advantage of her weakened state to stop her.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he warned her, his eyes black as night. Something in them froze the very blood in her veins, but it was gone just as quickly as it appeared. Smirking, Alec pushed himself up onto his elbows.

“If we were to do _that_ Miller, you’d probably wake your kids and the rest of the neighbors.” 

“Is that a challenge?” Ellie asked him. 

“Merely an observation,” Alec sniggered. “You’ll have to work on that, Richardson.” He got up from the bed to use the en-suite and Ellie tossed her shirt after him with another name for him that definitely wasn’t sanctified. 

*

Alec took care of himself and then washed his hands. He shut the tap off and leaned over the sink. His heart was still racing and the image of Ellie on the brink was branded into his mind. All he had to do was say her name, one word, and he shattered her on that bed. He’d never forget that. His pounding heart and the two pills he had to force down reminded him that it had probably been a mistake, but Alec didn’t care. He’d wanted to see her like that, just once. Resting his forehead against the glass, he closed his eyes and knew that it wouldn’t be enough. He gritted his teeth, knowing that it would _never_ be enough. More than anything he wanted to stay with her, with all of them, but the irony was that his heart wouldn’t allow it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to have this story done by my birthday but unfortunately that didn’t happen (although I came much closer than I expected). I’m going on a road trip so it might be another week or two before I can update, we’ll see if I survive. I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and have a Happy New Year!


	27. A Storm Warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I SURVIVED the trip. Apparently the previous chapter contained some offensive material in one particular scene and some of you were upset with me. I apologize, but after taking a long time to consider it, I decided against changing it or cutting it altogether. It hurt to think that I had triggered a negative reaction that I NEVER intended and I am very sorry. I WILL keep it in mind the next time I do write a scene of that nature, but in this case I believe that it fit with my AU versions of the characters, their relationship and their respect for one another and the AU in general. I do appreciate the honest criticism and I sincerely hope that I won’t make the same mistake and that my writing won’t ever trigger something like that again.**
> 
> **There is a reference in THIS chapter to an _IMPLIED_ TRIGGER in Ch.14. I’ll give you a hint: it was a book that Joe hid something inside. **
> 
> **Dear SEA, I think it’s time I started living but first I need to close this book.**

Ellie woke with the feeling that she was being watched. Fingers ghosted over her face, delicately following the lines that formed as she scrunched up her nose and suppressed a giggle.

"That tickles," she said, batting his hand away. 

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you," Alec whispered, his breath warming her face. She opened her eyes into his that were so close she could see the shades of brown in his irises. He rolled away from her and sat up.

"Alec." Ellie grabbed his arm and tugged him back to her. He flopped down on the bed, his head cushioned by her stomach. From that angle, his eyes appeared as large and deep as they had when they were centimeters from her face. They gazed at each other, suddenly shy. 

“You still don’t know how to say good morning like a normal person,” Ellie teased him.

Alec stared at her and then he got up slowly and scooted closer to her. He bent down, steadying himself with a hand flat on the bed beside her. Brushing her tangled curls off her forehead, he pressed his lips there. Ellie closed her eyes and opened them when he pulled away.

“Better?” he asked, smoothing the creases in her forehead. 

“I think there’s room for improvement.” Alec didn’t rise to her bait. Frowning, she took all of him in for the first time. He was fully dressed in another suit and tie, a constant reminder that no matter how much they had shared and gone through together, Alec always seemed to be hiding or holding onto something within those layers that he wore like a suit of armor over his fragile heart. 

“You’re leaving?” Ellie asked, hating how she sounded and felt so insecure. 

Alec nodded and the pad of his thumb traced over her eyebrow. “But not yet,” he reassured her. His eyes shadowed the movements of his fingers as they mapped out every contour and line in her face. He was meticulously learning every detail of her, approaching her like a case he had to solve. Ellie would’ve found it cold and detached, if it wasn’t for that softness in his eyes, stroking over every inch of her. The caress left her warmer than any tangible touch, but there was something in the depth of his eyes that unsettled her. It wasn’t pity, but nonetheless it troubled her. 

“When are you leaving?”

“Soon.” His eyes moved over every part of her face except for her eyes. 

“Where are you going?”

Alec expelled a breath and withdrew from her. Ellie sat up against the headboard, already missing the light touch of his gaze and his fingers. He rubbed at his neck and took a moment before he met her eyes. 

“I-” He cleared his throat. “I was thinking – if it’s alright with you – that I could try and um talk to Tom.” He dropped his hand from his throat and nervously waited for her answer. Ellie’s frown deepened as she puzzled over Alec’s request. Tom had always been civil to Alec since he started coming round (after she scolded him before his father’s sentencing), but he had eventually warmed up to Alec a few months ago. Ellie had seen them talking together plenty of times, especially over the last couple of days. 

“Alec, you don’t have to ask-”

“I want to take him out of school today,” Alec interrupted her, lowering his eyes to the faded bruises on his knuckles. “I thought I could maybe take him to Devon or something, just me and him.” 

Ellie narrowed her eyes, unable to shake the sense that she was missing something. Alec scratched at his neck and jaw. Sighing, he rested his hand on her thigh and met her gaze.

“I think that he might need to talk to someone - not that he can’t talk to you - but there are some things that-” He broke off and stared at her as if he was willing her to finish his sentence. And it hit her. 

“He doesn’t have a father,” Ellie said hollowly. Alec looked at his hand on her thigh and then he raised his eyes. Reaching for her face, he tucked a ringlet behind her ear.

“He doesn’t need one,” he told her. “He’s got you.” His face was open and his eyes said so many things that he’d never voice, but that he didn’t have to. 

“You’re amazing, Ellie,” he whispered, his hand cupping her cheek. “Those kids are coping and adjusting so well because you were strong enough for the both of them.” He searched her eyes and when he spoke his words rang with that same admiration and awe that she never thought she would actually _hear_. “They’re so lucky to have you as their Mum. Maybe they don’t realize that now, but they will.”

Ellie swallowed past the lump that had formed in her throat. 

“I was a mess,” she recalled. “If it wasn’t for Lucy, and Ollie, and my ex mother-in-law resurfacing…” She trailed off and her mind traveled down those dark spiraling weeks before she found Alec in the nursery. “Alec, if it wasn’t for you-” She choked up because there were too many things she needed to say to him, but she didn’t know where to begin. 

“All I did was hang around, took over your bed, got your kid banned from a Market, barely managed not to burn the house down, and then I got your kid stuck beneath a bed-”

“That’s what I needed.” Ellie sniffled as Alec wiped the tear from her cheek. 

“You don’t need me anymore,” he said, so low that she almost missed it. 

“Not in the same way,” Ellie agreed, pushing his hair back from his forehead. She wasn’t a complete disaster anymore, but she wasn’t completely fine either. “I still want you here. So, you better get the bloody pacemaker, you hear me.” She ducked her head, trying to find his downcast eyes, but he hid them from her. “I mean it, Alec. I don’t care if you burn the whole neighborhood down, or if you destroy and buy out the entire Market because you let Fred and Tom loose. I know they’ll be safe with you. And I don’t care if you-” She stopped in mid-sentence and noted Alec’s bowed head. 

“Alec, is Fred with Tom?”

“Tom’s at school,” Alec informed her guiltily.

“Then where-”

“He dove underneath there with half his bloody toys,” Alec said in a rush, tugging at his collar. He was speaking so fast that his words were running together. “I couldn’t coax him out, I can’t fit under there and I didn’t want to wake you. He tried to bite me but he’s very happy there. So, I shut all the doors and I swear I’m listening. He’s right underneath us-” 

Ellie stuck her fingers between her teeth and whistled. Something bumped and crashed beneath them, and suddenly Fred peeked over the edge of the bed. He had a dust bunny in his hair and that silly unicorn clutched in between his hands. Refusing to let go of it, he couldn’t climb up onto the bed. Alec scooped him up and deposited him in her lap. 

“That’s not the first time he’s done that,” Alec surmised, scratching at his chest. 

“He thinks he’s an animal, not sure which one yet, but he does this sometimes,” Ellie explained, plucking the dust bunny from her son’s hair as he squirmed and growled in her lap. 

“You could’ve filled me in, would’ve saved my knees and my suit jacket.” For the first time Ellie noticed that there were streaks of dust on Alec’s black suit jacket. He swiped at them and gave her an accusatory glare. She laughed at him until he coughed into his hand. 

“Most kids, Miller,” he said hoarsely, “would’ve gotten _into_ the bed.” 

Ellie froze as the memory of Joe and Tom in bed together flashed through her mind. Alec was focused on his jacket, continuing on obliviously, “God, Keira was crawling into our bed until she was almost five-” He caught sight of her expression before she could mask it. He was too perceptive and he knew her and her history too well to ignore it.

“Ellie,” he said quietly, his eyes widening a fraction. “Did Joe-”

“I don’t know!” Ellie snarled. “Let’s tack that onto the list of things that I _should’ve_ known.” Fred jumped and wiggled free from her, seeking solace in Alec’s open arms. 

“Did you check?”

“Yes, for god’s sake, do you think I’m an idiot?” she snapped at him so sharply that Fred burrowed into Alec’s chest. She shoved her hair back and forced herself to calm down. It wasn’t Alec’s or her innocent son’s fault. “I had them see two different specialists and a child psychologist to be absolutely certain that Joe didn’t lay a hand on either one of them.” She motioned to her son who was traitorously cuddling up to a man she’d met less than a year ago that she now knew better than his own father. 

“Fred won’t sleep in the bed with me,” she sighed. Alec frowned and glanced at her son in his lap before looking back up at her. 

“I know it’s stupid.” She shook her head and struggled to explain it to him. “When it got really bad I wanted him close to me, but he wouldn’t sleep or sit still.” She paused and lowered her eyes to the duvet. “Tom never had any problem sleeping with us and Fred was always with us as an infant, but after Joe left-” She stopped again. “I guess it didn’t even occur to me, but when he acted like that I couldn’t help wondering if maybe – maybe they were wrong, and my sons didn’t understand if it had happened, or didn’t say anything, or give any indication-”

“Ellie, stop,” Alec interrupted her. Cradling Fred with one arm, he grasped her shoulder with the other. “Look at me,” he ordered her. “You would’ve known by now if Joe had laid a hand on them.”

“How can you say that when you know that for fourteen years that man slept next to me, and I had no idea who he really was and what terrible things he was capable of.” Her voice trembled with the anger and the fear that she still couldn’t let go, even after all these months of trying to heal. 

“I know he’s a monster, but I don’t think he could’ve done _that_ ,” Alec said softly, rubbing his hand up her arm. “Not to them.” 

“I don’t know anymore. You always said, don’t trust, and now I don’t even know if I can trust my own memory or theirs.” She looked down at her baby. “They’re so young, and he was so awful, and he was their father and they trusted him-”

Alec picked up Fred and sat against the head board beside her. Wrapping his free arm around her, he drew her into his side. He murmured something and Fred moved over to curl against her breast. 

“I don’t think he ever laid a hand on them,” Alec said, looking down at Fred between them. “But even if he did, I’m going to make sure that he _never_ lays a hand on either one of them or any other child again.” His gaze met hers steadily and Ellie could see the fire behind it. She kissed her son’s curls as Alec drew them both closer. 

“You’re going to have to show him what we found,” she stated, referring to the book with the photographs that she’d discovered in a box over the weekend. She blocked out those images and hugged her son for as long as he’d let her. 

“You know I have to,” Alec whispered and brushed another kiss over her hair. Ellie closed her eyes as Alec squeezed her shoulders. “I don’t want to, you know that, but I need to be sure that he’s never getting out of there.”

“I know,” Ellie whispered. “I trust you.”

Alec stilled and Ellie thought she could feel the stutter in his chest.

“You can’t trust anyone,” he reminded her, his breath hitching. “Not even me.” 

Ellie looked up at him. “We’ll never know everything about each other. Like you said, sometimes we can’t even trust our own minds, our own hearts, or our own bodies,” he said heavily. He reached for her hand on Fred’s back, his longer fingers lining up with hers and pressing them. “But I can promise you Ellie, that I will never lay a hand on either one of them and that I will make sure that Joe never gets near _you_ again,” he vowed, his fiery eyes cementing the oath. 

Ellie couldn’t trust herself to speak. She kissed his cheek, her lips lingering until Fred elbowed Alec and broke them apart. Alec flinched and Ellie chuckled as her wild child leapt off the bed with a howl. 

“Definitely a wolf,” Alec said, smiling.

“Today maybe,” Ellie said, cupping his face between her hands. “But it’s always changing…” She leaned in and kissed him. 

Alec hesitated and then suddenly pulled her into his lap. His fingers trembled as they wove through her hair and snuck beneath her t-shirt to play across her ribs. When he started shaking, she pulled away. His eyes were squeezed shut and his hands slid down the planes of her back until they were aligned with her hips. 

“Alec?”

Alec opened his eyes for a split second. She saw the glassy sheen to them and the way his eyelashes were clumped together. Then he had her in his arms, straddling him and caged against his chest. He kissed her with that same loss of control she’d tasted the previous day, except this time there was a hint of salt and copper. His fingers would leave smudged bruises on her hips like the ones he’d left on her wrist and the ones he’d left on her neck. The colors would fade within a couple of days, but those marks he left on her would stay there long after he was gone. 

Abruptly, he let go of her with a curse and a soft apology. He scraped the back of his hand across his mouth and then scrubbed his face. Blinking rapidly, he gently but quickly untangled his limbs from hers. Ellie sat stunned in the middle of the bed as he lifted up her son and told her he’d meet her downstairs. 

“Alec.” 

He stopped in the doorway but wouldn’t meet her eyes. Ellie didn’t know what to say.

“I need to go soon,” he said thickly, without looking away from her son. She glanced at the clock and was alarmed to find that it was already past nine. 

“Can you give me enough time to shower?” she asked, hopping up from the bed. Alec raised his head and his eyes raked over her from head to toe, undressing her all over again. Ellie blushed. 

“Take your time,” he urged her. His eyes met hers for a long moment. And then he left with her son. 

She didn’t take long, but by the time she got downstairs, Alec was dry-eyed and so calm that she wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing. Fred was under the table again, pretending to nip at their heels and snarling. Alec handed her a steaming coffee mug and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. 

“You sure you’re alright with me taking Tom out of school?” Alec asked her again, staring at his feet. 

“It’s fine,” Ellie said dismissively. “If the school gives you any trouble, just say you’re Ollie.” 

“Ollie?” Alec sputtered. 

“They probably won’t ask, but some people worry about predators even at that age, and even though half the time they’re in your own home,” she sighed and looked down at the discolored tiled floor. Alec didn’t argue with her. They stood in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. It was then that she noticed that Alec only had one shoe on. 

“Your wee beastie stole it,” he answered her arched brow. 

They glanced at each other and struggled to suppress their grins. 

“Don’t look at me,” Ellie said, holding up her hands. “That’s your shoe.” 

“He’s _your_ son,” Alec reminded her, smirking and stepping closer. “And he already tried to bite me twice.” 

“Do you know how many bite marks I’ve got?” Ellie snorted, leaning toward him. 

Their amusement was sucked out of the room as the significance and gravity of Ellie’s words sunk in. Ellie waited, holding her breath as Alec uncrossed one arm. He gingerly touched the collar of her button-down shirt and then folded it down. The heat rushed into her face as he carefully examined and then outlined the bite mark he’d left last night on her neck with his fingertip. 

“Damn it,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Someone’s going to see that.”

“You said you thought Tom knew,” Ellie said, pulling away from him. 

“I don’t know, Ellie, but I’m not worried about Tom.” Shaking his head, he thoughtlessly took a sip from her coffee sitting on the counter.

“You should’ve stopped me,” he accused her, taking another swallow of her coffee as if that was going to steady him. He’d made the same exact accusation the night he’d lost control of her car, bruised her wrist and snogged her for the first time in a smoky bar. 

“It’s not my fault that you’re losing control,” Ellie snapped. 

The second the words were out of her mouth, Ellie knew she’d hit a nerve that she hadn’t been aiming for. Alec lowered the mug and they both realized at the same time that he’d just gone ahead and proven her point. He clumsily set it down on the counter with an unsteady hand. Ellie took it and dumped the whole thing into the sink. Alec braced himself against the countertop and covered his mouth with his hand. Ellie didn’t know what to do with him so she took the opportunity to snatch his shoe back from her crazy cub. She dropped it on the floor next to his feet, and then after a moment she got down on her knees in front of him.

“What the hell are you doing?” Alec asked her as she picked up his socked foot, almost tipping him over. Ellie stuffed his foot into the shoe and tied his shoe laces like she would for one of her children. Alec told her to stop, but he was paralyzed because he was too afraid he’d kick her. After she was done, she sat back on her heels and pressed her hand to her forehead. She knew that tying his shoe wasn’t going to solve anything. She couldn’t take care of him like she could take care of her children.

“Is it my fault?” she asked him. “You weren’t like this before…” She couldn’t remember when it began, the slow but steady decline because she’d been too busy trying to heal and recover the ground that she’d lost. Other than feeding him his pills during the episodes, letting him sleep in her bed and hang around her children, and forcing him to open up to her bit by bit; she hadn’t noticed how bad off Alec really was or done anything for him until it was almost too late. 

“Is it because we’re-” She paused, trying to find the right word for what exactly they were doing. Last night, he’d told her how much he _cared_ about her and her boys, and then he’d shown her how much he _wanted_ her and left a mark on her to prove it. But now, he acted like it was another reckless mistake and Ellie wasn’t sure where she stood with him. The sunlight was coming in through the window directly behind him and his face was shadowed. “Is it-?” 

He blocked out the sun, bending and grabbing her under her arms. He dragged her to her feet and against his chest before she could get a good look at his face. His heart was racing out of control, or perhaps it was her own that drowned out the sound of his weaker heartbeat.

“Your heart-”

“It’s not going to stop,” Alec spat. He rested his cheek against the top of her head and held her there until both their hearts had slowed.

“You never answered me,” she said, treading softly because she wasn’t sure she could bear the answer. 

“For god’s sake, it is _not_ your fault!” he growled. His voice quivered with all that pent-up rage and frustration that had nothing at all to do with her, and yet she knew that she was somehow at the center of it. 

“Anything can set this fucking thing off now,” he admitted and Ellie knew that his fury was only directed at his own weakness. “And I am getting worse, I can feel it now, and I don’t know how to handle it,” he bit out as if it killed him to say those words. He let go of her and Ellie stepped back. Crossing his arms over his chest, he pressed his lips together and glared at a spot on the tiled floor. “What we’re doing right now…” He ran a hand through his hair, shying away from labeling something neither one of them could explain. “The timing of _this_ …” He opened his mouth, closed it and opened it again. “It’s not-it’s not the best.” He looked at her then and Ellie saw the guilt wash over his face accompanied by that unsettling expression of something she didn’t understand.

Reaching for her hands, he tentatively took them between his own. 

“Ellie, last night, I won’t ever forget that,” he said huskily, his eyes burning into hers. The smoldering gaze softened as his eyes mapped out her face in the same manner he’d explored every line and curve with his fingers. “And these last few days, these last few weeks, these last few months with you and Tom and Fred…” He stroked his thumbs over hers. “I didn’t have anyone, and all of you, and this stupid house, and this stupid town, and that stupid beach became the closest thing I had to a _home_.” Releasing one of her hands, he adjusted her hair clip, when all she wanted him to do was rip it out and snog her against the counter. 

“Ellie, I’ll never be able to make it up to you.” His gaze was too heavy and disconcerting; he was too grave, too serious and too remorseful. “ _Ellie_ , I-I’m-” He opened his mouth again and Ellie was suddenly struck by a flashback of the two of them in a deserted interrogation room. She started talking, stamping out that chill that his expression provoked. 

“It’s alright,” she reassured him. “You owe me nothing. You already have made it up to me over and over again just by being here. Alec, I understand-”

“No, you don’t,” Alec interrupted her, shaking his head. 

“We can slow down until you recover from the surgery,” she offered but he released her hands, still shaking his head. “We can wait. I’ll wait until you’re ready-” 

“Ellie, I don’t want you to wait!” She stumbled back a step, startled by the loud outburst and how fast he’d gone from looking up at her to staring her down. He was breathing hard and again she was struck by how she rarely noticed how much taller he was until he lost his temper. “I-” He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, calming down. “I don’t want to wait,” he said, upon opening his eyes. Swallowing, he painstakingly pulled back her collar again, gently touching that mark he’d left on her neck that would remain there longer than either one of them realized at the time. “I don’t think we can,” he confessed and leaned in to delicately brush his lips over that bruise like an apology. His eyes were sad as he withdrew from her. 

Rolling back his sleeve, he tore his eyes from her to look at his watch. 

“My car’s going to be here any minute,” he said, sniffing and rubbing at his nose. Without looking up, he pulled out his phone and shooed her away. “You better go get your little wild animal before he gets into another box.” 

Before she could say anything, the crinkling and tearing of something that sounded suspiciously like packing tape carried from the sitting room. Ellie groaned, wondering how Alec always knew. 

He was wrong about the box this time. Instead Fred had found the whole roll of packing tape and had it sticking to everything but the boxes. Her little monster didn’t even bother trying to pretend that it wasn’t him; he was too wrapped up in it. 

“Where’s Daddy?” Fred asked her and dove between her legs, almost making it all the way to the kitchen. She snagged him in the doorway and sat him down on the coffee table. “ _Daddy_?” 

“Daddy’s not here,” Ellie hushed him absentmindedly and went to work removing the packing tape. Fred cried as some his hair came off with the tape, and Ellie idly wondered if she could patent this as a cheaper alternative to waxing. 

When she returned to the kitchen with Fred wailing for his Daddy and giving her another reason to want to murder her ex-husband, Alec was gone. 

*

He’s gone but sometimes it’s like he never left. Ellie sees him everywhere; across the street outside her work, across the field at Tom’s football match, across the parking lot at the Market and in places she never expected. It’s worse than when Joe first abandoned her because she _wants_ to see Alec. And it gets harder every day. She drops Fred off at his grandmother’s and realizes that she’s not the only one that _sees_ Alec. 

“Is he still looking for Daddy?” Her former mother-in-law, Anne, asks as Fred peeks inside her letterbox.

“I don’t know what to tell him,” Ellie sighs. 

“Well, you could start by telling him that the postman isn’t his father,” Anne tells her, helping Fred to a pile of junkmail. “He hasn’t been back since but he didn’t even look like Joe or a postman.” 

“Was he tall and skinny with brown hair?” Ellie queries her. Anne squints at her and nods.

“Freddie wouldn’t let go of him,” Anne recalls, “I had to peel him wailing off of the poor bloke.” Fred wiggles free from her and sits down on the steps to sort through the fascinating world of coupons, free cruises, and exciting advertisements for vacuums and kitchenware. 

“Does he do that a lot? Throw himself at a man that isn’t his father and doesn’t resemble him at all?” Anne inquires, worriedly. 

“No,” Ellie says, her eyes watering. 

Not anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to all of you that left comments, kudos and reviews for the last chapter. I hope you don’t murder me or I won’t be able to post the next chapter!


	28. The Man Who Started the Storm and the Boy Who Broke Him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kudos, the comments and the feedback! I understand that a lot of people are checking out because Alec MIGHT die and I totally get it. But the story is NOT over and Alec MIGHT live. I really appreciate those of you that have let me know that you read and liked some of the story up to this point, regardless of whether you’re going to stop reading or continue on with me. For those of you still here: THANK YOU! Oh, and I did do SOME research for this chapter, but fortunately I’ve never been in this position, so I made the rest up.
> 
> Dear SEA, that old building is full of memories and ghosts and sawdust, but I think I’m finally ready to break out of that prison and end the dynasty. P.S. I’m taking the llama with me. P.S.S. Avocados are still 4225.
> 
>  
> 
> **There is an _IMPLIED_ TRIGGER in this chapter. It’s the same one from Ch.14. I’ll give you a hint: it was a book that Joe hid something inside.**

The school reminded him of a prison. That was Alec’s first thought as he entered the sprawling building and was immediately assaulted with a barrage of questions from the woman at the front desk who was probably twice the size of him. He could’ve flashed his old badge that he still carried with him, but Ellie had told him to give Oliver’s name. So, he pretended to be the little shit and even made a poor attempt at the local accent. The woman squinted at him over the top of her wire-framed glasses, and Alec honestly thought that she might lob that stapler at him and chase him off the premises. But he passed the inspection and Tom’s classroom was paged over the intercom system. 

Alec wished he could’ve waited outside instead of beneath the harsh glare of the school’s warden. He restrained himself from pacing, meandering over to a trophy case next to the office. It was a mistake. A black and white photograph of a victorious girl’s football team was on the other side of the glass, along with a tarnished silver trophy from over twenty years ago. It didn’t stop him from seeing his daughter’s face among those smiling teenage girls, or the faces of two other girls frozen forever in a framed picture of them laughing on one of their last days alive. 

“Alec?”

Tom’s voice echoed through the foyer. Alec’s head whipped up to find the woman watching them suspiciously.

“Tom.” Alec cleared his throat and once again tried on the English accent. “I’m here to pick you up for your doctor’s appointment. And I wish you’d stop calling me Alec, I _hate_ that name, but Ollie, I really, _really_ don’t like.”

Tom rolled his eyes and marched ahead of him out of the school. Alec trailed after him and almost got hit in the face with the glass door in Tom’s wake. 

“Tom!” 

Tom spun around, his face bright red. 

“You told my Mum, I know you did!” he snarled at him. 

“I did tell your mother that I was taking you out of school,” Alec admitted, finally catching up to him. “But I didn’t tell her where we were going or specify when or why.” 

“You’re lying,” Tom accused him, tossing his backpack to the ground and hoisting himself up onto the stone wall. 

“I _lied_ to your mother,” Alec said through gritted teeth, loathing himself for all the lies he’d told Ellie over the last twenty-four hours. In that moment, he wanted to blame Tom, but he knew that he couldn’t fault Tom for his own weak heart. Ellie would murder him if she found out about this lie, but if they were _lucky_ she’d never have to know. In order for this to work, though, he needed Tom to cooperate and to act a wee bit more mature than a child throwing a tantrum. 

“I’m taking you to see your father, just like I promised,” Alec said, crossing his arms over his chest. Sullenly perched on that stone wall, Tom was on eyelevel with Alec. It made it surprisingly easy for Alec to fix the boy with a hard stare that he usually reserved for men that had done worse things than force him to break his mother’s heart and his own, by giving this boy’s monstrous father the one thing he wanted more than anything else. 

“You have to _listen_ to me and do _exactly_ what I tell you, is that understood?” His eyes bore into Tom’s until the boy’s face turned a darker shade of red and he ducked his head. 

“Do you understand?” Alec barked at him. Tom shrunk in on himself and nodded. Seeing him hunched like that and cowering beneath his glare, Alec hated himself a little bit more. But it was necessary for Tom to grasp the gravity of this visit before Alec took him anywhere near that prison. 

“Get down,” Alec ordered him. He bent down to pick up the boy’s backpack. Straightening and slinging it over his shoulder, he didn’t even register the lightheadedness that accompanied the motion because he was so familiar with it by now. Tom caught up with him easily and followed Alec into the school’s car park. The driver had gone to fill up at the petrol station, but Alec had handed him more than enough money for him to hurry back. 

Alec waited until they were shielded from view behind a vacated school bus, and then he dumped Tom’s backpack on the asphalt.

“Anything you think could be used or mistaken for a knife, or any other kind of weapon, you need to take out,” Alec told him, staring Tom down. Tom frowned, confused. “You’re going to have to put your bookbag through a metal detector,” Alec explained, his voice harsh. “And it’s probably going to be searched too, so if you have any drugs or any other illegal substance in there, I need you to hand it over to me right now.” 

Tom’s grey eyes widened and his face paled. Alec was suddenly reminded of that young boy that he’d interrogated in a small cramped room with the murderer calmly sitting right next to him, comforting Tom as Alec accused him of murdering his own friend. He wondered if he was being too stern, when Tom opened the backpack and took something out. Alec’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of a pill bottle. Oh, God, not again. What the hell was he supposed to tell Ellie? 

“Give it to me,” he demanded.

Tom dropped it into his hand. Alec turned it over in his palm, reaching into his coat for his glasses or his own pills, whichever he was going to need first. His hand stopped over his heart, never making it all the way inside. He recognized the label. It was a generic over the counter painkiller, a stronger one than most children his age would have, but nonetheless nothing that would flag in a search. It was still an odd choice. 

“Did your Mum give this to you?” He looked up at Tom and found him with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on his backpack. 

“The school nurse gave them to me at my last school,” he mumbled, “I switched schools when Mum moved us back in December.”

“Why did she give you this?” Alec asked carefully.

“Headaches,” Tom answered, fidgeting. He nudged his open backpack with his foot and almost managed to hide his humiliation beneath his blonde mop of hair. “I got – I got migraines because I couldn’t sleep, Fred and M-Mum cried a lot and I had – I had night – trouble sleeping,” he stammered. Alec pressed his hand harder against his chest and willed that organ not to break for this child that had carried a weight that was too heavy for him for so long. 

Tom kicked his backpack. 

“I fell down when I was – um – playing football and I had to go see her. The nurse gave me those in case it happened again but it stopped when I got to this school because – because - I got better.”

Alec knew Tom was lying, but he’d never tell him. Instead he crouched down in front of Tom and tucked the bottle back into his backpack. 

“Those are okay,” he reassured Tom. He zipped up the backpack and offered it to him. 

“I won’t tell your mother,” he promised him as Tom took it from him. Tom nodded and wiped at his nose. Alec pretended not to notice as he slowly got to his feet. Tom held onto his bag and Alec kept his hands stuffed into his pockets; and they both desperately tried not to think of all the horrible things that they were still holding onto because of what Joe did to Danny. 

*

HM Prison Elmore was located an hour away and Alec and Tom spent most of the duration of the trip in silence. Alec had made more than enough trips to Elmore to spot the prison’s cluster of brick buildings and the flash of barbed wire high up on the moor. The distant view disappeared behind the trees and reappeared several miles later as they drove into it. The driver gave Alec a strange look when he directed them through Elmore’s gates. It wasn’t a high security prison, only a category C, but Alec did not want to take a child in there and clearly the driver didn’t either. Alec caught a glimpse of Tom’s shocked expression reflected in the window and made one more attempt to dissuade Tom from entering that building. A man could spend his whole life in there or he could come out _changed_ , either reformed or broken. Alec didn’t know how this was going to change Tom or Joe but he feared the worst. 

“Tom, we don’t have to do this. We can turn around right now and go back,” Alec said gently. 

“ _No_.” Tom looked straight at him and Alec saw his mother’s maddening obstinacy in him. Nothing was going to change his mind, not even fear, now that it was made up. The car stopped and Alec tried one last time. 

“Are you sure?” he asked the boy. 

Tom nodded, squaring his shoulders and reaching for his backpack between them. Alec paid the impatient driver who couldn’t wait to get as far away as possible from that miserable place. He took off as soon as they got out.

“Have you got your student I.D.?”

Tom took it out of his pocket and Alec fished out his phone to call his contact. It usually took 48 hours to process the visiting order at Elmore, but Alec had gotten it pushed through earlier with the help of his contact, and the fact that he had been the SIO on Joe Miller’s case up until two months ago when his extended contract with the Wessex County expired along with Joe’s ideal timeframe to appeal. Although that opportune window was gone, Joe could still appeal and win his case with the help of a very good solicitor. The added weight on Alec’s chest reminded him that he would have had to make this painful last visit with or without Tom.

Alec led the way to the prison’s visitor center and was greeted by the familiar bearded man that he always dealt with whenever he was forced to see Joe. Alec still didn’t know if his name was White or Black but neither one of them cared. White/Black had all the paperwork in order for them and redirected them to be searched before entering the prison’s visiting hall. Alec warned Tom again about the metal detectors, the search of his personal belongings, and the pat-down that he’d be forced to endure to ensure that he wasn’t armed. He was so concerned about Tom that he almost forgot about that dark secret that he was carrying in his coat. Upon removing the garment, the paper bag slipped out and spilt the book onto the floor. Alec dove for it and nearly plowed into Tom in front of him. The woman in charge of the search immediately flagged him, but Alec flashed his old badge, and Black/White fortunately stepped in with the rushed clearance for the item that Alec had requested from CS Jenkinson, in addition to the visiting order for him and Tom. It was another ten minutes before Alec was able to sort everything out, and Tom witnessed the entire thing from the other side of the metal detector, but thankfully out of ear-shot. Alec was sweating and swearing under his breath by the time he made it through the bloody search and joined a frightened Tom. 

“What happened?” he asked Alec. “What’s in the bag?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Alec said breathlessly. He steered Tom into the waiting area, made him put his backpack in one of the lockers, and then sat him down in one of the seats next to a friendly looking woman that reeked of cigarettes and cheap perfume, but smiled at Tom. He sunk into the plastic chair beside Tom and wiped at his brow.

“Tom, you can’t come in with me,” he told him once he’d caught his breath. 

“ _What_?” Tom almost jumped out of his chair and Alec had to throw out his arm to stop him. 

“Listen to me!” he snapped. “I need to have a talk with your father first and _then_ you can go in.”

“Why?” Tom asked, suspicious and frowning. 

Alec remembered why he’d failed as a parent to his daughter when she was the same age as Tom was now. He didn’t have enough patience and he didn’t know how to relate to them.

“You agreed Tom, to do _exactly_ what I told you, and you will wait until I’m done talking to your father before you get to see him,” Alec said in a voice he had used very, very, very rarely with his darling daughter. But he wasn’t Tom’s father and he stopped being a father almost three years ago. Joe had probably gotten more time with Tom than he had with Keira, and yet they’d both thrown it all away for “love”. The idea that he and Joe were more similar than he would have liked to admit nauseated Alec. 

“I won’t take long, Tom, I’ll be right back,” he promised, squeezing Tom’s shoulder. Tom crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at him. In that moment he looked so much like his mother that it hurt. Alec stood and with one last look, he left Ellie’s son behind. 

*

Joe looked the same as the last time Alec had made a mandatory visit three months ago, right before his extended contract with the Wessex County Police had expired. Alec knew he’d changed over that short period of time. The rapid deterioration of his health was obvious by now and Joe didn’t miss it. He’d been expecting that, but he forgot how perceptive Joe had to be in order to hide his dark secret so well.

“Is she alright? Is Tom alright? Is Fred? What’s happened?” He assaulted Alec with inquiries the moment he approached Joe’s table in the back of the hall. Fortunately, there weren’t too many visitors or prisoners, and mercifully no one was close enough to see or hear what Alec had to do. 

“They’re fine, sit down,” Alec ordered. Grimacing, he lowered himself into the seat across from him. That sick feeling had only intensified at the sight of Joe, and he had yet to fully recover from the metal detector fiasco that Tom might’ve overheard and Joe was partially responsible for. 

“Are you?” 

“Am I what?” Alec snapped. 

“Are you alright?” Joe asked with a creased brow. Alec was painfully reminded of the man that had sat across from him at the dinner table, had cooked for him, and had made him laugh for the first time since he had landed in Broadchurch. If this had been three months ago or even three weeks ago, Alec might’ve believed that he was genuinely concerned and that more of the version of Joe that had been a loving and attentive father and husband was real. 

“I’m not alright because I’d rather be anywhere else than sitting across from you right now,” he told him bluntly. Joe blinked at him, taken aback. Although Alec had been disgusted by the man, he’d made an effort to be polite and carefully handled the man that had no idea how easily he could have gotten off if he’d pled guilty and gotten the right solicitor. A solicitor that had attended Danny’s funeral and had known an alarming amount details of the investigation and the arrest, had actually taken Alec aside at Danny’s funeral and warned him that if Joe ever did plead not guilty, Ellie could be the reason he walked. The more Alec had dwelled on it, and the files, and the evidence, the more Alec had believed her. He’d gone straight to his former superiors, and at the cost of his pride had actually pointed out his own errors in judgement and shoddy police work, and convinced them to allow him to stay on until those additional six months expired, and he was certain Joe would serve his time. Now, he finally had a tangible weapon to use against him. 

“I’m going to keep this simple,” Alec began, removing the paper bag that had been too big of a secret to hide for much longer. He set it on the chair next to him, out of sight and out of reach, and clasped his hands on the table in front of him. “I’m not on the case anymore, my contract expired weeks ago and your time to appeal has lapsed. In a few years that could change, but I doubt I’ll be here for that. So listen very carefully to me, Joe. If you ever do get out of here, you stay away from them. You hear me?”

Joe nodded and flattened his hands on the table. 

“Are you going to tell me how they are?” he asked helplessly. 

“You can ask Tom yourself.” Alec cursed himself inwardly for blurting that out too soon because Joe was already on his feet and searching for his son. Alec’s energy was waning and he couldn’t afford to waste any more time. “Sit down!” he barked, “And stay seated unless you want me to get that guard to come over here and handcuff you to the table.” Alec deliberately pointed to the most menacing and threatening guard on the floor. Thankfully, it worked. 

Despite the openness, the high ceilings, the windows and the lack of people, Alec had never felt more suffocated than he was at the end of that long hall seated at a table with Joe Miller. He leaned forward on the table, crowding the monster that was responsible for ruining so many lives, and the heart attack that had probably destroyed what was left of Alec’s failing organ. Since his arrest, Alec had found each visit harder than the last as he found it more difficult to restrain himself from beating the man on the other side of the table. 

“If you so much as lay one finger on that lad, so help me god, I’ll send Ellie down here and this time I’ll let her kill you,” he warned Joe, dropping his voice. Joe’s eyes widened a fraction as if the idea of Ellie getting her hands on him again did frighten him. 

“She’s not here, is she?” he queried. 

“No. And under no circumstances are you to tell her or anyone else that you had contact with Tom,” Alec added, in spite of highly doubting that Joe would be the issue. 

“Why isn’t he here now?” Joe asked, his eyes flitting to the door for the nth time since Alec had told him he had come with him. Alec couldn’t blame him; it had been almost nine months since Joe had seen his son. Alec had stopped keeping track of how long it had been since he’d last seen his daughter; he tried to pretend that it hurt less if he didn’t know the exact number of months, days, hours and minutes. But he still felt every excruciating second. A sharp sting in his chest reminded him that it had been a very, very long time.

“You and I need to have a little chat and I think even you would agree that your son shouldnae be present for this.” Alec’s accent was thickening as the anger rushed through him at the sight of the paper bag that he put down on the table between them. 

“What’s in the bag?” Joe asked warily, his attention finally focused on something other than that door that his son was behind. 

Alec removed the evidence from the crinkled paper. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t in an evidence bag, and that his, and Ellie’s, and possibly Lucy’s prints were all over it; Alec knew that turning it over to the Broadchurch police department would merely be a formality and a way of burying it so that no one else ever found it. He spun it around so that Joe could get a real good look at “The Color of Fire”.

“Do you recognize this?” he interrogated him, holding the book up. 

All of the color drained out of Joe’s face. Alec didn’t need a verbal confirmation. 

“How did you get that?” Joe asked, his voice wavering. 

“Ellie found it packed away in a box. Someone shoved it in there when she was moving out of your house because they thought it was just a book. Fortunately, it wasn’t your son,” Alec spat. He opened the seemingly innocuous book and took out the stack of photographs. 

“Don’t touch those!” Joe snarled and lunged over the table for them. Alec slammed a hand down on top of the stack and Joe actually scratched him with his fingernails and bent back one of his fingers. A guard was halfway across the room in thirty seconds but Alec had it under control. He shot to his feet and shoved Joe with all of his might, calling upon a strength that he didn’t think that he had in him anymore. Joe knocked over his chair behind him. The hit and the sound of the folding chair crashing to the floor immediately brought Joe back to himself. That feral primitive need to have those treasured possessions he’d kept so secret instantly left him, and Joe sat right down on the floor. 

“What’s going on?” the guard asked sharply. 

“He touched me,” Alec panted as the guard scrutinized them both with a hand on his belt. He held up his scratched wrist to prove it. Joe scrambled to his feet, unfortunately unharmed. Alec wished the guard hadn’t been there and that the adrenaline rush hadn’t left him so suddenly. He would’ve liked to have done a lot more than that, like tear Joe from limb to limb and donate his organs to anyone that could salvage what was left of them. 

“I’ll be keepin’ an eye on you two,” the guard warned them. 

Alec collapsed and almost missed the chair. His heart was racing, and he didn’t know how much longer he could handle sitting in the same room as that bastard that had destroyed Ellie’s life and abandoned her sons. The book and the stack of photographs were still there between them, but neither man reached for them. Alec forced himself to sit up and choke down the bile in his throat as he turned over the first one. 

“Don’t,” Joe said, but this time he was a different man entirely. “Please, _don’t_.”

Alec flipped over the second one.

“Stop.” Joe was pleading now. “Stop it.”

Alec swallowed hard and showed Joe the third and then the fourth.

“Put them away!” Joe had his hands over his eyes. “Put them back!” His voice cracked and Alec knew that he was going to start whimpering. The bloody coward murdered an eleven-year-old and he still couldn’t face up to his own sins. Alec felt tears burning his own eyes as he reluctantly dropped the fifth, and the last one, and spread them out on the table before Joe. 

“This.” Alec pushed the photographs toward that cowering man that had broken an entire family up by taking away their son, and then broken up his own by breaking Ellie and forcing Alec to break her too. Joe had tainted Ellie, Tom and Fred with his filthy hands (even if he hadn’t physically laid a hand on any of them) and none of them would ever be the same. “ _This_ is evidence of what you did.” Alec’s voice and hands quivered with each syllable that he strung together and each breath became harder than the last. 

“Get rid of them, _please_ , I can’t look.” A sob and a sniffle escaped Joe and Alec wanted to punch his sniveling nose. 

“You need to remember that the Broadchurch Police Department has these in their possession,” Alec said, his breathing growing more and more ragged. He gathered up the photographs and stuffed them in between the pages of the book. He clumsily dropped the “The Color of Fire” into the paper bag, praying that it would never see the light of another day. He tried to replace it in his coat, but it was too big and his fingers were shaking too much. 

“I won’t be back but if you ever even _think_ of appealing, they will use this evidence against you, and I will make it my dying wish to get you into a prison where sex offenders have a price on their heads.” His vision was beginning to blur, but he wasn’t sure if it was because his white hot rage was responsible for the angry tears he was fighting back, or if it was the side effect of a heart that couldn’t handle hatred that strong. Another muffled sob escaped through Joe’s fingers and Alec hoped he fucking understood what he’d just threatened him with, because he could not handle going through all of that all over again. He shut his eyes and balled his hands into fists, trying to let go of some of that emotion and calm down before Joe became responsible for his second and fatal heart attack. He took a deep breath and then another and another. When he opened his eyes, he could see that monster more clearly. 

“Pull yourself together,” he told Joe sharply, despite the hypocrisy that he could barely pull himself together. But he hadn’t murdered an eleven-year-old, or had those incriminating photographs of that poor boy in his possession, or left destruction, and ruin, and death in his wake. Alec had made some colossal mistakes but he’d done his time and accepted his penance. At least the things he had done were _forgivable_ , while what Joe had done was _not_. For the first time, Alec felt somewhat sorry for Joe because that weight would always be on him. 

“I’m going to bring your son in here,” he said between gritted teeth. Joe dropped his hands and sat up. He wiped his running nose and looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. “If you say so much as _one_ wrong word to that boy or touch him, I will process that transfer as soon as I leave this building, and by tomorrow I will make sure that every fucking prisoner in that bloody prison knows that you are a sex offender and a marked man.” 

Alec stared Joe down until he was certain that he understood. Joe was physically stronger than Alec but as he watched Joe shrink in on himself and sneak a terrified peek at the paper bag containing six 4”x8”s that could kill him, he felt like the stronger man. 

“How long do you have?” Joe asked.

And just like that, Alec felt himself falling again.

“I spent more than enough time as a paramedic to recognize that look,” Joe said, pointing to Alec’s face, and once again Alec was blindsided by Joe. He didn’t know how a man that had devoted himself to saving lives for over a decade could sink so low to take one and hurt so many others. 

“I don’t really know,” Alec confessed, surprising both of them as he voiced the words out loud for the first time since Marty had told him. “Maybe a few months, perhaps less than that, or if I’m _lucky_ , possibly longer…” he trailed off, his tongue pressed to the inside of his teeth and his fingers trembling against the tabletop. 

“How’d – How’d she take it?”

Alec blinked at him. It took him a moment to register who Joe was talking about and then what he was implying. 

“Don’t lie to me,” Joe said, his voice quiet. He sounded so much like that man that had made Alec laugh when he tried not to admit that Ellie hated working for Alec, that Alec actually listened for a second. “I noticed it the last time you were here and I thought I was imagining it, that _scent_ …” Joe trailed off, his eyes studying Alec. “El’s been using the same lotion and shampoo since the day I met her. I can smell her on you.”

Alec’s temper flared up again at the mention of Ellie and the subtle reminder that Joe had been Ellie’s husband for nearly fourteen years. He’d been with her for over fourteen _years_ and all Alec was asking for was fourteen more _days_ with Ellie. 

“You _disgust_ me,” Alec told him, leaning across the table. “You had _everything_ and you threw it all away. You had a wife and two sons that _any_ man would’ve been proud of and you-” Alec broke off as that cold fury swept through him. He couldn’t even speak. He’d been jealous of Cooper for taking his wife and daughter, but not as jealous as he was of that man sitting across from him. He’d unleashed three years of stewing betrayal and anger and pain on Cooper, but that didn’t compare to the rush he felt now as he looked at Joe Miller. Even that smell Alec had carried back to his hotel room after she’d nicked his coat or his scarf was tainted now by a man that continued to follow Ellie and her sons no matter where they went, despite the fact that Alec had done everything in his power to try and cage him in that red brick building for the rest of his long healthy life. Joe would live for years and Alec was facing the reality that he would die before the end of the year. And even if he had had _years_ or a few more _months_ to take care of them and treat them like they deserved, Alec knew that he never would’ve been able to protect them from Joe entirely. That man had already infiltrated their hearts, and minds, and even their bodies. Alec couldn’t fight with a ghost. 

“I’m sorry,” Joe said, bowing his head. 

It was too late and too much for Alec to handle. He was two seconds away from killing that despicable man and himself in the process. The room tilted as he pushed back his chair and got to his feet. His head was spinning as he planted his hands flat on the table and loomed over a ghost that would never die. 

“I’m going to make sure that you _never_ see your son or have any contact with them again and then when you’re rotting in your cell _alone_ , maybe then you’ll actually be _sorry_ for what you did to _Danny_ and to _them_.” 

He thought that he might’ve actually seen a genuine open admission of guilt and remorse in Joe’s face, but Alec’s vision was blurring as he shifted his weight to his weakening legs that were threatening to give out on him. He couldn’t even make it out of that room, and Joe was responsible for yet another loss of his dignity and a reminder of the mortality that was slowly creeping up on him. Slumping down in his chair, he beckoned to the guard and asked him to have Tom brought in. 

With trembling fingers, Alec cracked open the hard plastic that had left cuts on his palms that were more than skin deep. He swallowed the bitter medicine in front of Joe and desperately tried to pull himself together for the sake of Ellie’s son that needed someone to be there for him because the fucking man across from him hadn’t been. 

Tom came in with the guard, seeming so much younger and smaller, dwarfed by the breadth and height of that large man that kept so many rough and twisted criminals in line. He stopped halfway across the room, frozen, and Alec’s heart nearly froze in mid-beat. Joe, who had been hopping out of his seat minutes ago, was rooted to his chair, suddenly afraid. 

Tom turned from his father to Alec and it broke his heart, because Tom was seeking reassurance from him instead of his own father, and Alec couldn’t give it to him as much as he wanted to. What he wanted to do was grab Tom and carry him out of there, but he wasn’t strong enough. Alec wasn’t sure he was strong enough to handle this either, but he understood now how much Tom was like his mother. 

“Tom,” he called and reluctantly beckoned to him. 

Tom came slowly and hesitantly to sit beside Alec. Gone was the boy that had been willing to manipulate and threaten Alec and do anything to get to that prison. Tom looked between Alec and Joe with wide frightened eyes. Joe began to speak but Alec held up a hand, silencing him. 

Putting his hand on Tom’s shoulder, he asked him, “Do you want me to stay?”

Tom nodded and Alec squeezed his shoulder before resting it on the back of Tom’s chair. Joe was staring at them and Alec realized the irony of it all. Their roles were reversed and Alec was on the other side of that table with Tom, trying to comfort and calm him and protect him from someone that could verbally abuse him. And as he gripped the back of the chair and watched Tom, he realized that despite their rocky start, Tom had wormed his way into his heart right along with his baby brother. 

*

Alec wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting. On some level, Tom needed closure in the same way that Ellie had needed it. But he was still a child and Joe had been his _father_. Tom was expectantly shy and quiet at first, comparing the man across the table from him with the father that up until the moment of his arrest had presumably been a good parent, or had at least been a masterful actor. Alec believed that Joe really had loved his children and Ellie in some way or form, and he had been honest when he told Ellie again that he didn’t believe that Joe could’ve done _that_ to _them_. It was very hard for Alec to keep his mouth shut as Joe began telling Tom how much he loved and missed him, and asking him about his brother, his mother, and school, and acting as if they weren’t in a prison, and he hadn’t just murdered his boy’s best mate and ruined so many more lives, including his son’s, in the process. Once more Alec had to restrain himself from getting up and walking out of there because he was so nauseated by Joe. Tom’s responses were short and consisted of one or two word answers that would’ve made Alec’s daughter’s few replies look like novellas. Alec chalked it up as part of Tom’s understandable shock and confusion as he tried to rectify the two men, but he was wrong. 

Tom fidgeted in his seat and started tugging at his sleeve, making the mistake of stretching his arm across the table. Joe reached for his hand and Alec and Tom reacted. Alec growled at him to get his hand off of him, but it was Tom’s voice that Joe heard. 

“Don’t touch me!” Tom hissed. 

Joe recoiled and the devastation on his face was something that Alec could understand. Alec knew what it felt like to be rejected by your own child. But it still didn’t make it any easier for him to sympathize with Joe or struggle to stay seated. 

“Tom-” Joe tried again, his voice wavering with that hurt. 

“No,” Tom said, his voice shaking just as much as his father’s. “You killed Danny. You’re a murderer and a-a-” He couldn’t bring himself to say that terrible word and Joe jumped in before he could make that accusation. 

“It was an accident,” Joe pleaded with him, leaning across the table and inching toward Tom’s hand again. “Tom, I would _never_ -” 

“Don’t _TOUCH_ me!” Tom snarled and his voice echoed through the half empty visiting hall. Alec was almost certain that several people had turned around, and two of the guards were hovering over them with their hands on their belts. 

“I hate you,” Tom spat and Joe slunk back into his seat. But Tom was nowhere near finished. “I _hate_ you.” He was bright red and panting by this point, half out of his chair and almost on top of the table. Tom glowered at that man that had once been his father, but was being pushed further and further back and away from him, and that important role he’d once played in Tom’s life, with every vicious truth that followed. 

“We had to move, twice, and no one will talk to us or go near us because they all think that we _knew_ you were going to kill Danny. Mum was too afraid to go into town because people said mean things to her and even kicked us all out of the Thai takeaway place,” he spat at his father, spraying spittle on the table top because he was so _angry_. Alec hadn’t been aware of any of this and fury and shock were warring with his already fragile heart. But Tom kept going. 

“I got beat up at school, _twice_ , and they kicked me off the football team, and Mum had to get me transferred to another school. And Fred cried for you every night and Mum, and I never slept, and I got migraines, and nightmares, and you made Mum have nightmares and you made her _cry_. She tried to hide it from me, but I heard her every single bloody night!” Alec didn’t bother chiding Tom for his language; his heart was swelling and cracking with each painful word that came out of Tom’s mouth.

“I hate you for how much you _hurt_ her, and me, and Fred, and Danny, and Beth, and Mark, and Chloe. And I hate you for what you did, and for what you are, and for what you pretended to be, and I hate you, _I hate you_ , I HATE YOU!” Tom was crying by this point, and Alec’s hand had moved from the back of the chair to Tom’s heaving shoulders. He didn’t even notice that his own vision was once again blurring. He blamed it on tears, assuming that the pain in his chest was from seeing how much pain Tom was in from holding all of that in for so long. Tom swiped at his eyes and glared at his father who was still sitting, stunned, across the table from him, horrified and shell-shocked. 

“You’re not going anywhere near me or Mum or Fred! I don’t care if you’re my biological father; you’re not my Dad anymore!” Tom’s voice was cracking, shifting pitches with each quivering word that was almost a sob. “I’m gonna take care of Mum and Fred and We. Don’t. Need. You!”

He was so focused on Tom that Alec didn’t notice anything; not the fact that his heart rate had escalated to an alarming pace as his heart filled and broke at the same time, not the fact that he couldn’t feel Tom’s trembling shoulder beneath his numbing fingers, not the fact that he could barely see Tom or Joe or the fuzzy room, not the fact that Tom’s voice was fading out along with everything else around him. 

It wasn’t until he felt Tom tugging on his arm and heard Joe’s distant voice saying his name over and over again that Alec realized that something was wrong. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe in and out but he wasn’t sure if it was going to work this time. He was too far gone. Scrambling to his feet, he almost knocked the chair over behind him. 

“Alec?” Tom got up with him, terrified, and Alec pushed him back down with an unsteady hand. His legs were barely supporting him and he was frantically calculating the distance to the facilities fifty feet away. 

“Tom, ‘M fine,” he reassured him and stumbled away from him, and Joe, and the book, and the photographs and everything that Joe had done. 

He pushed through the door and slammed into the startled cleaner, both of them tripping over the mop and bucket. The other man tried to slow his inevitable fall but Alec was already crashing. He hit the tiled floor and tried to stubbornly push himself back up. Tom was out there alone with his father and he needed to get up. But he couldn’t do it, not this time. His body failed him and he was beyond help. Shuddering, he sank down onto the slippery tiles. 

The cleaner bent over him and asked if he was alright, but Alec had already slipped away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evil Cliff Hanger! Hang on tight…


	29. The Boy who Survived the Storm and the Man who Grew to Love Him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys seemed to enjoy that cliff hanger so I’ve decided to end EVERY chapter with a cliff hanger! Kidding! Maybe… Thank you for the kudos and comments! Every bit of feedback helps. This sort of references a painful conversation that Alec and Tom had at the end Chapter 7, but I don’t think it’s necessary to reread it. 
> 
> **There is an _IMPLIED_ TRIGGER in this chapter. It’s the same one from Ch.14. I’ll give you a hint: it was a book that Joe hid something inside.**
> 
> Dear SEA, Alec and Tom knew that you weren’t going to wake up and that you were _leaving_ before I did. I wish I’d realized it sooner.

Alec woke up to the smell of bleach and the sound of voices, too many voices. Hands were grabbing at him, trying to strip him of his clothes and unbutton his shirt. Alec tried to lift his head and someone pressed down on his chest. Something clattered to the floor beside him, resounding in his ears. Alec saw a bright red box and the letters AED before someone cracked it open. _Fuck_. His eyes had started to flutter shut as he succumbed to the weight, the weariness, the ache in his chest and his struggle to breathe; but at the sight of that red fucking box and what those stubby fingers were clumsily trying to get out of it; his eyes snapped open and he was suddenly wide awake. He rolled away from them, coughing and wrenching himself free of those grabby hands. He spotted a set of scuffed up sneakers and everything came crashing down around him. 

_Tom_.

That was all it took for Alec to fight his way through that mess and chaos of arms, feet, fingers, hands and a robotic voice that that was trying to meticulously talk someone through a process that Alec refused to endure. Not again. 

“Get off me! I’m _fine_!” he was gasping, and panting, and coughing with the effort that it took to wrestle with four different men, all of whom were stronger than him. The cleaner was trying to hold him down, the giant guard was there along with two others, and Black/White rushed in with someone in latex gloves, a black bag and a stethoscope. 

“He’s having a heart attack!” the giant guard cried out, with a shocking amount of anxiety for someone that looked as tough as nails and cold as ice. 

“He passed out on the floor!” the cleaner exclaimed, panicked. “I think he hit his head-”

“How the bloody hell do you work this thing?” The guard with the AED was cursing at the box that was still droning on in a mechanical voice. “It’s not supposed to be rocket science!” 

“Alright, everyone calm down!” The paramedic/doctor/whatever was trying to regain control and failing. 

“Mickey you’re gonna break it!” The other guard snapped at the man with the faulty AED. 

In the commotion, Alec was able to gradually extract himself from the mess and make eye contact with Tom. The boy was scared shitless. The sight of him staring at Alec, horrified, almost sent Alec’s struggling heart into a faster tempo. But it also gave him a clarity that he’d been lacking. Tom needed him and Alec’s stubbornness helped him to at least recover enough to sit up. He found the pill pack on the floor by Black/White’s boots and seized it. 

“’m not having a heart attack!” he exploded, breathing hard. His words were slurred together, but the others made enough sense of his garbled speech to stop what they were doing. Most of the hands left him, and six startled people let go of him and briefly stopped trying to work the bloody machine. 

“I have a heart condition,” he panted, getting up on his knees. He waved the paramedic off. He held up the pills as he swallowed two of them. “’m fine. Happens…all…the…time.” He looked for Tom and waved him over. Tom was frozen, his eyes as wide as saucers. The paramedic was saying something to him, getting down on the floor beside him, opening his bag and taking out the blood pressure cuff. 

“ _Tom_!” Alec growled at the boy. Tom finally unstuck his feet from the floor and came to him. Alec told the paramedic that he was fine again and grasped at Tom’s arm. He almost toppled Tom as the poor kid was forced to take his weight. He used the boy as a crutch to get to his feet. Alec teetered and squeezed his eyes shut, willing his body to get its equilibrium back and for the bloody drugs to work this time and _fast_. 

“Sir, you need to-”

“I just got this bleeding thing working!” 

“I need to at least take your blood pressure!” 

“He wasn’t breathing! I’m not lyin’!” 

“DI Hardy! _Hardy_!” 

Alec got Tom to the door and then out into the visitor hall, running on pure adrenaline. He was halfway across the floor when it started waning. The voices were following him, accompanied by the footsteps and the familiar flood of questions that followed him every time he tried to escape after another attack that left him hospitalized, or dangerously close to it. Alec had gone through it enough times that he dealt with it with a practiced ease that for anyone else would’ve been alarming. 

“Lay off, ‘m fine!” Alec’s accent was so heavy with exhaustion and the dull ache that throbbed through him each time he put one foot in front of the other. He was leaning more and more on Tom. “Jesus, sod off! You’re gonna give me an actual heart attack!” Alec snarled at them, heedless of the swears that he was hypocritically spitting out in front of Ellie’s thirteen-year-old. He was also about to break Tom’s back if he didn’t get a hold of himself and soon. Alec had lost a lot of weight over the past three years and had always been a lightweight, but Tom was nowhere near big enough to carry him. No child should have to carry him on top of all those other burdens that had weighed down on those shaking shoulders. 

“Keep walking, _keep walking_ ,” Alec ordered Tom, hoping that he could stop all of this if he could just get them out of the building and away from everything. He shoved Tom out of the visiting hall, into the waiting area and they almost forgot Tom’s backpack. The woman with the smoker’s voice and cloud of perfume had to kindly remind them. Alec took advantage of the moment. He slouched down in one of the chairs and somehow managed to fight off the irritating paramedic, the shockingly concerned Black/White, and the panicked cleaner that was recounting the incident in detail yet again. 

“For god’s sake, I’m not dead! Leave me alone!” 

Alec forced himself back on his feet. He slung his arm around Tom’s shoulder and step by step they trudged past the metal detector and made for the door. As soon as they were outside in the open air without his annoying entourage, Alec could breathe more easily and think more clearly. He redirected Tom around the side of the building and found the stone bench overlooking the prison’s well maintained garden. 

Letting go of Tom, Alec collapsed. Shaking, Tom joined him. Alec shut his eyes and focused on his breathing, counting each breath as it went in and out. Once again he was reminded of Ellie and how many times he’d used her heartbeat to regulate his own. The bloody pills were doing their job for once. Alec relaxed his grip on the stone bench beneath him and risked opening his eyes. 

The garden was spread out before them behind a metal fence. At this time of year it was blooming. Alec was fascinated by the amount of care that those criminals could devote to nourishing those plants and the amount of beauty and growth that could come out of someone that had probably done something ruinous to fence them in there, right along with those flowers and flourishing greenery. Alec took in another deep breath and let go of that stone bench, one finger at a time. Only then, when he had his hands clasped together and his bearings again, could he look at the shaken boy beside him. 

“Are you alright?” he asked Tom. 

Tom looked at him, his eyes shining suspiciously. He nodded and wiped the back of his hand across his face, fiercely blinking away that sheen in his eyes before a single tear could fall. 

“A-are you o-okay?” Tom stammered, dropping his eyes to his sneakers in the dirt.

“I’m okay,” Alec lied. 

Tom nervously glanced at him as if he was afraid that Alec was going to drop dead right there beside him. Alec probably resembled a ghost, but one that wasn’t as strong as the one that was sitting on the bench between them. 

“Did you tell your mother?” Alec asked, mentally preparing himself for the fall out. 

“No.”

Alec stared at Tom, surprised. He vigorously kicked at the dirt with his sneaker, spraying Alec’s shoes and the bottom of his slacks. 

“Are you going to?” Alec wondered. Tom shook his head, attacking the dirt. It was only then that Alec noticed what Tom had in his lap and what he’d been clinging to since the moment Alec had spotted him from the bleached floor of the visitor’s restroom. He’d been so focused on Tom’s face that he hadn’t seen it. But now he saw it, and an iciness that had nothing to do with his heart condition crept through his veins. 

“Tom,” he began slowly, “Did you open that bag?”

Tom’s head lifted for the first time since he’d asked if Alec was okay. He looked at Alec and then down at the crinkled paper bag in his lap as if he’d forgotten about it. 

“No,” Tom answered and the chill left Alec as he handed the bag back. “Why did you bring a book in?” Alec stared at the curious boy that wouldn’t be a child for much longer and decided to give him the truth, or at least part of it. 

“Tom, do you remember when we talked about why I was with your mother over the weekend?” Alec inquired, jogging his memory. Tom nodded. Alec swallowed and held up the bag.

“Everything that your mother found out about your father is in here,” he told him. Tom frowned at him and the bag. “Your father hid it in a book because he didn’t want anyone to find it or see it,” Alec said softly. Tom’s brow cleared, but only slightly. Alec wasn’t going to tell him any more than that or show him, but he knew that for Tom, it would be enough. Tom wasn’t going to search or pry any further and Alec was able to breathe a sigh of relief. 

“I’m going to hand it over to the Broadchurch police so that no one will ever find it or see it again.” He pressed his palm down on the paper bag and the book concealed inside of it, as if it were a bible that he was swearing upon. “Hopefully, _this_ , will keep your father in prison for a very, very, very long time.” 

As Alec gazed out over that garden and that wire fence that boxed in those thriving plants, and those prisoners lovingly coaxing those greens out of the ground when many of them had stamped out human lives, he prayed that it would be enough to keep Joe away from them. Although that ghost still sat between them and would always be there, Alec knew now that he didn’t have to worry as much. 

“Tom, what you said in there to your father…” Alec trailed off, putting the book aside and keeping his eyes on those blossoming flowers. Beside him, the dirt stopped flying as Tom stilled. Alec swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to take you here because I thought…” He paused and then went on, “Your mother thought you were too young, and I agreed with her.” Lowering his eyes to his pale knotted fingers, he admitted the truth. “Tom I was wrong, you’re not a child anymore, and today you proved it to your father and to me.” There was so much he wanted to say to that young lad beside him, but he knew he’d never find the right words. Turning to Tom, he unclasped his hands and tentatively rested a hand on Tom’s hunched back. 

“Your Mum would’ve been proud of you,” he told him. Tom chewed on his lip and ducked beneath that overgrown mop of blonde hair. “Tom, I know I’m not your father, but if I were your father…I would be very proud of you too,” he praised the lad. Tom raised his head and met Alec’s gaze with gleaming eyes. Alec studied Tom’s face and wondered how Joe could toss aside a son that was so brave and so strong for his mother and his baby brother. 

“You’re going to take good care of Fred and your Mum,” Alec said. Tom sniffed and nodded, but Alec wasn’t asking for a promise this time, not like he had in a hallway two months ago when Tom had first asked him if he was sick and Alec had told him he might have to go away one day. Alec never thought he’d run out of time so quickly, but he knew now that he had nothing to worry about on that front. Tom would fill his father’s shoes quickly; he had already taken the first steps. He was his mother’s son and had grown into a lad that _any_ man would be proud to call his own. 

“You’re _leaving_ , aren’t you?” Tom surmised, his voice cracking. Alec was caught off guard by the question, but after everything that had just happened and the weight he’d forced Tom to carry out of there, he should have been expecting it. His heart still broke as he recalled exactly what the word “leaving” meant to both of them. 

“I’m sorry, Tom,” he said and bit down on his lip as a lump formed in his throat. His eyes began to burn as Tom lowered his head, moving closer to him with the motion. Alec’s arm slid around the young man’s broadening shoulders as Tom started trembling. 

“I’m so sorry, Tom, I really wanted to stay.” His own voice cracked as the reality sunk in for both of them. 

Alec squeezed his eyes shut as Tom leaned closer and closer until his head was against Alec’s shoulder, and Alec took back some of the weight that he’d laid on Tom. Alec gave into that paternal impulse he’d been fighting and held Tom, like he used to hold his daughter. He rocked and hushed Tom like a child, wishing that he could stay and stop Tom from taking on the role of a man that had been thrust upon him so suddenly. And when Tom cried, Alec silently cried too.

*

It took a while before Alec could get up off that granite bench. He didn’t know how many pills he’d taken and it was only half past one. Tom had stopped crying, and Alec had gotten rid of any sign of his tears well before Tom was ready for him to let go. But the emotional and physical toll of dealing with Joe and the photographs, listening and speaking to Tom, and his stupid heart failing him when he needed it most, was catching up to him. Alec knew that a couple more pills weren’t going to solve anything. Tom was getting antsy and worried, sneaking surreptitious looks at him. Alec had already called for a car but it was at least another twenty minutes away. After Tom side-eyed him for the hundredth time, Alec sighed. 

“What?” he asked Tom, bracing himself for the question that had been flitting across the boy’s face for the last ten minutes. Tom fidgeted and toed the giant hole that he’d dug in the dirt during the time it was taking for the stupid car to come. 

“Out with it, Tom,” Alec snapped, rubbing at his throbbing temple. 

“When are you leaving?” Tom blurted out. 

Alec pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t deal with this on top of everything else and his headache was getting worse. The cleaner was right; he must’ve hit his head. 

“I’m leaving Monday,” he answered Tom, expelling a breath. 

“Monday?” Tom’s voice cracked and Alec did a double take when he saw all the color drain out of Tom’s face. 

“No, no, no, Tom,” Alec rushed to clarify himself, touching the lad’s arm. “When I say _leaving_ , I mean I’m leaving Broadchurch and I’m going home.”

“Oh.” The color rushed back into Tom’s face and Alec dropped his hand. He watched Tom squirm and waited for the inevitable question. 

“You’re coming back though, right?” Tom didn’t look up from his mobile but Alec could sense that he was holding his breath. When Alec didn’t answer, Tom tore his eyes away from the screen that he’d stopped paying attention to a while ago. 

“I know you brought all your stuff in yesterday and I know you _said_ that you and Mum aren’t-” he broke off and made that same face that reminded Alec that although Tom could take on his father and take care of his mother and brother, there were many things that he wasn’t mature enough to deal with yet. “I’d be okay with it, you know,” Tom said, clearing his throat and faking a nonchalance that he didn’t feel. “If you and Mum date or whatever-” Tom waved his hand and didn’t even bother naming that odd relationship that he’d probably seen forming between his Mum and Alec from the moment he let Alec into the house. “I don’t mind you staying with us. I like you better than Geoffrey, so does Fred, and Mum obviously lov-”

“ _Tom_ ,” Alec interrupted him, his voice harsh enough to shut Tom up before he went too far or said too much. But it was too late, Alec had heard enough. Lucy’s words from over a month ago echoed in his mind. He’d gotten too close and too attached, and he was so caught up in Ellie that he’d forgotten that she wasn’t the only one that he was abandoning. Fred was too young but Tom… Alec opened his mouth and tried again to find words that weren’t going to help anyone. He could’ve lied to Tom like he’d lied to Ellie, but those five days he’d given himself to say goodbye were shrinking fast, and Tom had witnessed everything. 

“Tom, I don’t know if I’m coming back,” he said softly, steadily holding Tom’s gaze and forcing himself to watch Ellie’s son’s reaction. 

“But you said-” Tom back peddled.

“I need to go home. I need to see my daughter. And I need to stay with my aunt for a while,” Alec said, outlining all the affairs he needed to get in order like the will that he hadn’t updated yet. He’d made it so long ago with Vicky, when she was pregnant with Keira. Alec blocked the memory of Vicky’s swollen fingers entwined with his as he helped his nine month pregnant wife into an uncomfortable chair that could barely contain her, and their unborn child, and that happiness they both shared as he signed his name and secured a future for all of three of them that only lasted for thirteen years. He refused to entertain the idea that there were three more people now that if he hadn’t had his darling daughter and Iris to think about, he would’ve given them everything he had left. 

“You’ll visit, though, you said you’d come back next Saturday for my football match-”

“I don’t think I can make it,” Alec cut him off, silencing Tom. He couldn’t look at Tom anymore. Staring at the garden before him and all that _life_ , Alec told Tom the truth. 

“The other day when you came home and found me on the sofa and Fred crying,” Alec started hesitantly, “I wasn’t sleeping. And when your mother left you in the restaurant to look for me, I was outside because I um – I got sick and today – today when I – when I _fell_ -” Alec broke off and bit down so hard on his lip that he tore through flesh and tasted copper. “I was _lucky_.” He didn’t feel very lucky as he rested his forearms on his thighs and the stark colors of those flowers and that greenery started to bleed and blur before his eyes. 

“You shouldnae have seen that, Tom,” Alec said, pressing his palms together and hiding behind his hair as he tipped his head toward that earth that was waiting to swallow him whole. “And I don’t want you or your mother to have to see that happen again.” 

Tom was quiet beside him but Alec knew that he was listening raptly, struggling to make sense of it all. 

“I thought you said you were okay,” Tom said.

“I am,” Alec assured him, although he wasn’t, not really. He slowly rubbed his hands together, choosing his words with care. “The next time that happens, Tom, I might not get back up.” 

He let the words sink in for both of them, allowing that seed he’d finally dropped to grow into something ugly like that thorn bush on the cliffs. Alec’s mind was already building a thorny wall around his fragile heart, hedging himself in and protecting himself and protecting the ones he cared about most from himself, and he only had three and a half more days before it was finished.

“Mum and I can take care of you-”

“No.” Alec’s voice was soft but it carried a weight that Tom couldn’t compete with. Alec finally turned and met Tom’s gaze. “I don’t want you to be there when that happens and I don’t think you want your Mum to be there either.”

Tom couldn’t argue with him. He’d listened to his mother cry after Lucy told him what the CMO had predicted, and Lucy and the CMO had been right, about everything. 

“I have to leave now, Tom, before I get any worse. Because I will get sick, a lot sicker than I am now, and I don’t want you or your Mum to see me like that or have to worry about when the time will come that I can’t get back up,” he said, meeting Tom’s eyes with a steadiness that didn’t reach his aching heart. He brushed back Tom’s bangs so that he could see his face more clearly. “I’m sorry, Tom, that I have to leave so soon. I thought I had more time. But I know that you’ll take care of your Mum and your brother and that you’re a _good_ lad that’s going to continue to make your mother very proud and I-” He halted again as his emotions overwhelmed him. “I want you to know Tom that if I ever had a son, I’d want him to be exactly like you.”

Alec gazed at Tom until he blushed and lowered his eyes. Tom didn’t look at him or say anything to him, but he scooted closer until his shoulder was leaning against Alec’s. This time it took everything in him to take Tom’s weight as Alec finally gave into everything he’d been holding back. 

“Give me your phone,” he said to Tom, holding out his hand to him. Tom’s eyes narrowed but he obeyed. Alec dragged out his glasses and found the contacts and his name at the top of that alphabetical list. He punched in Iris’ number from memory and handed it back to Tom. 

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around, but Tom, if you or your mother ever need _anything_ , anything at all, you can call my mobile or that number and I’ll try to do everything that I can,” he offered in one last desperate attempt to ensure that three of the people that he cared about most were taken care of long after he was gone. 

Tom frowned, but nodded as Alec put his glasses away and rubbed at his heavy eyelids. They spent the rest of the wait in silence, but they’d already said everything that needed to be said. 

Tom had to help him up off that bench when the car arrived at last. Alec slunk into the car and closed his eyes, sinking down into the leather upholstery. Tom gave the driver the address and nudged Alec right before he drifted off. 

“Alec?”

“Yeah,” he asked groggily, cracking one eye open. 

“Thanks,” Tom mumbled, his face reddening as he fiddled with the zipper on his backpack. 

“Don’t thank me,” Alec said, yawning. His eyes slid shut and he fell asleep, knowing that he’d gotten to say goodbye to at least one person and left Ellie and Fred in very good hands. 

*

Tom woke Alec when they reached the outskirts of Broadchurch. The car took them up the familiar steep incline that ended in one little cottage half buried in hedges and flourishing shrubbery. Alec handed over all of the cash in his wallet, over tipping the driver, but he was too tired to care. Tom rummaged for the key in his backpack and ran up the steps to unlock the door. Alec remained where he was taking in the house that was the home of the only happy memories he had of the last year and so much more. 

“Are you coming in?” Tom asked, poking his head out. 

Alec climbed the three steps to the front stoop and looked out over the vivid green landscape and the horizon where the ocean met the sky. Six days ago, he’d sat there with Ellie and finally understood the beauty of the place and that woman silhouetted against that never-ending sky. For the first time, he’d actually wanted to _stay_ with her and her boys, in Broadchurch. Six days later, he was finding it hard to leave not only Ellie, Tom, Fred, but Broadchurch itself. Somehow the stupid small town, the stupid terrifying ocean, the stupid death-trap cliffs, the stupid ugly cottage and the stupid endless sky were now so entwined with three people he loved that it had become a _home_ and a part of him too. 

“Hurry up! Mum’s gonna be mad if I let all the bugs in.” Grumbling about ladybirds, bees and butterflies, Tom went inside. 

Alec turned his back on the view of Broadchurch and followed Tom, stepping over the threshold and into their home for the last time. 

*

Months later, Ellie picks up Alec’s coat and drapes it over her arm. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine that it still smells like the smoke from distant bonfires and a crowded smoky bar where he reeled her in and kissed her. Sometimes she breathes in him; the hotel soap and shampoo, the generic laundry detergent, the shaving cream he’d used very rarely and that familiar underlying scent that she associated with warmth and embraces that she felt long after he let her go. Most of the time, the only thing she can smell is the old shampoo and lotion that she used and a hint of bleach and disinfectant. She runs her fingers over the black garment and she can almost feel the sand from Good Harbour Beach hidden in the crevices, the salt from the air whipping off the ocean, and the lingering dampness of a rainstorm in Broadchurch that _broke_ them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I definitely spent more time researching the correct term for a ladybug than the workings of an AED, I’m pathetic. But hey, Alec’s still alive… for now…


	30. Thunder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for taking the time to comment, give feedback or leave kudos!! And a big thank you to nannyogg and pgilmour75 for letting me bother them, and for taking the time to read through this chapter as well as many of the preceding ones! I owe you both so much for your patience and your honesty.
> 
> Dear SEA, it didn’t matter if we were ready to strangle each other, every snowstorm you _always_ offered me a place to stay. I think about that whenever it snows because I understand now what you meant. Sometimes telling someone that you care about them doesn’t need to be implicitly stated; sometimes it’s as simple as cleaning snow off a car, or screaming back and forth across an icy parking lot about how awful winter is and how wonderful a tropical island would be, or making someone laugh and laugh about the literal shit-storm they just got stranded in because work and stupid people didn’t care about blizzards or that you might not make it home. You did though, you _cared_.

Ellie came in with the bag of groceries and Fred. She put them both down on the floor of the foyer. Fred knocked over the sack and ran off into the sitting room. Ellie sighed and started picking everything up. The house was quiet but Tom and Alec’s shoes were on the floor. Frowning, she went up to her son’s room and found him playing a video game with his headphones on. He moaned that she made him lose a life. Ellie didn’t get more than a sentence and a nod that the lunch with Alec had gone well, before he was begging her to leave, so he could finish his game, and promising to come down later for dinner. 

Ellie returned downstairs and followed her little monster into the sitting room, wondering what kind of mess he could’ve created in that short window of time. Fred hadn’t created a mess but the scene still made her freeze. 

Alec was stretched out on the sofa and her son was perched on his chest. Fred looked up at her, frightened and wide-eyed, and Ellie realized that something was wrong. She stepped into the room, her heart sinking and that same iciness flooding her veins. Alec stirred and she stopped. 

Fred’s attention was immediately diverted. He patted Alec’s cheeks, murmuring something as he petted Alec’s hair. Alec lifted his coat and coaxed Fred onto his chest. He covered them both with the garment, like he had blanketed her with it once when they shared a bed for the second time. Fred cooed something as he squirmed to get more comfortable. 

“’m not Da,” Alec said gruffly. 

Ellie was halfway across the room, ready to grab her son, but once again the sight made her halt. Alec was pale, too pale. 

“Fred!” she hissed, but Fred was too slippery, and Alec rolled away from her so that Fred was tucked between him and the cushions. 

“’s fine,” Alec mumbled groggily. “He’s fine.” He batted her hand away and Fred anchored himself to Alec like a barnacle on a sunken ship. Ellie sighed as Fred hid himself beneath Alec’s coat. Giving up on Fred for the moment, she smoothed Alec’s matted hair off of his forehead. Up close, he looked even worse. 

“What happened?” she demanded. Alec didn’t respond and Ellie shook him gently so as not to disturb her son. “Alec? _Alec_!” Fred poked his head out, accidentally ramming Alec’s chin. Alec groaned but smoothed his hand over Fred’s crown. 

“’s one of the things he gave me yesterday,” he explained, slurring his words. “Makes me tired, not used to it.” He was already drifting off again and Ellie knew she’d have to wait to interrogate him until he was more awake. 

“I’ll let you sleep,” she whispered and brushed her lips over his forehead. She ran her fingers through his tangled hair and reached down to take Fred from him. 

“Leave him,” Alec insisted as Fred burrowed under his coat again. 

“Alec,” Ellie sighed, but Alec pulled the coat more firmly around himself and Fred. Ellie caught a last glimpse of Fred’s sleepy eyes, and then he slithered beneath Alec’s black coat that Ellie knew would keep Fred warmer and more comfortable than any blanket. She hoped Fred was as tired as she thought and that he would sleep instead of disturbing Alec, but Alec and Fred refused to let go of each other so it was out of her hands. 

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” she told him and left them alone. 

While Alec and Tom had been out, Ellie had realized that in spite of her fridge overflowing with takeaway boxes, there was absolutely nothing that wasn’t fried or greasy or all carbohydrates. Alec couldn’t eat any of _that_ , and Ellie had taken it upon herself to drag Fred off to the Market (not the one that he was banned from) and get some fruit and vegetables that she hoped he would eat without making a face at them. It turned out that she needn’t have bothered. 

Ellie spent the next half hour, watching the clock over the stove and listening for any movement in the sitting room. She was so distracted that she put vegetable oil instead of Italian dressing into the salad and overcooked the vegetables that she was steaming on the stove. Cursing under her breath, she tried to salvage what she could and that’s when she heard him. 

Tom’s tread on the stairs was so soft that Ellie almost missed it. Low voices drew her attention to the sitting room, and again Ellie was struck by the image of Alec with her sons. Tom must’ve brought down a blanket and woken Alec up. Fred was still beneath Alec’s coat, snuggled against his chest, but Alec had rolled over to face Tom who was sitting on the coffee table with his head down. 

“’s not your fault,” Alec said hoarsely and extended his arm without jostling Fred. He laid his hand on Tom’s shoulder, bringing him closer. “You cannae blame yourself, it could’ve happened any time, it had nothing to do with any of that,” he said roughly, his Scottish accent thick. “Tom, I want you to remember what I told you,” Alec’s voice dropped so low that Ellie couldn’t hear him. Tom mumbled something and Alec clasped his shoulder. 

Seeing them together, Ellie wondered if perhaps Fred wasn’t the only one of her children that Alec had grown to _love_. Her heart got stuck in her throat and she made a sound that caused Tom to pull away and Alec to drop his arm. Ellie slipped into the kitchen, feeling that she might’ve ruined something. Tom came in behind her, wiping at his nose. Before she could ask, he grabbed the pizza box out of the fridge and dashed upstairs to his room. 

Soon, Fred scampered into the kitchen. One second he was attached to her leg, and the next he was trying to climb onto the counter, dangerously close to the stove. 

“Fred, no!” Ellie had the pot in her hand and wasn’t able to put it down fast enough. A pair of arms swept him up right before he could get up there. Alec had crept up on her and now had her wiggly son, safe within the circle of his arms. 

“Guess I’m not the only one you need to worry about burning the house down,” Alec quipped. 

Ellie took in the exhausted man in front of her. Despite the lingering weariness and grogginess of sleep and the alleged side effects of a drug, Ellie saw how capable he was of caring for her son. It was such a small, ordinary, natural impulse that any one would’ve acted upon, but it had ramifications that Ellie wasn’t quite prepared to accept. The previous evening at the kitchen table flashed through her mind and Ellie wondered again if she’d found another _partner_.

“What?” Alec asked, blinking at her with eyes that were still heavy with sleep. 

“Thanks,” Ellie said, swallowing. 

“Don’t thank me.” Alec’s voice was sharp and the last of the sleepiness was gone from his eyes. He dropped his gaze and held Fred closer to his chest. Walking past her, he sat down in the same chair as last night. At some point over the last five months it had become _his_ chair and Ellie hadn’t noticed until now. 

“While you and Tom were out, Fred and I went to the Market, not the one that you took Fred, thanks a lot for that one by the way, I really liked that one.” Ellie went back to salvaging the meal and kept up a steady stream of nonsense, falling into the old habit of babbling, especially when nervous. She couldn’t understand why she was so anxious now. Obviously, Alec was ill and had had another episode, but she’d seen him worse. She’d feel a lot better on Monday when they finally had a date for the pacemaker and she wouldn’t have to worry as much. Unlike Alec, she was optimistic that he’d make it through the surgery, she had to be. 

“It could’ve been worse, one time I put chili powder instead of cinnamon into the-” She broke off as she set down the salad bowl on the table and saw Alec’s face. 

He hadn’t been listening to her (not for the first time) and he didn’t seem to be aware that she was in the room with him at all. His arms were coiled around Fred and he had his cheek pressed against her baby’s head. Turning, he kissed Fred’s hair and squeezed his eyes shut. Her little hurricane had calmed again in a rare moment of quiet that only seemed to happen when he was with Alec. Alec opened his eyes, solely focused on her son as he brushed Fred’s curls off of his forehead.

“He’s going to look just like you,” Alec said without looking up. He bit down on his lip and Ellie noted the glassy sheen to his eyes that had nothing to do with his exhaustion or a drug. “You’re going to be good to your Mummy, wee Fred,” he whispered, his voice thick. Alec nodded and Fred mimicked him. Ellie watched the exchange with a sense of foreboding instead of the sweetness that it should’ve provoked. 

“Daddy, sad?” Fred cupped Alec’s face between his hands, frowning and tilting his head toward him. “Daddy cry like Mummy?” He pointed at Alec’s eye and Alec flinched when his finger got too close. Ellie snatched her son from him so fast that Alec almost tumbled out of the chair. Alec held his hand over his face, but Ellie wasn’t convinced that it was merely because her boy tried to poke his eye. Fred wailed and stretched his arms out toward Alec. 

“Daddy! I want _Daddy_!” Fred screamed. 

“I’m not your Dad, Fred, I’m not your _Dad_ ,” Alec protested weakly, but his voice cracked and he buried his head in his hands. Ellie stared at the man that had spent so much time with her and her children that one of them thought he was his father. She didn’t even know where to begin. Putting Fred down on the floor, he immediately stopped screeching and threw himself at Alec’s leg. Alec automatically caught Fred against him with one hand before her son catapulted into the edge of the table, but kept his face hidden behind his other hand.

“How long has he been doing that?” Ellie asked, propping her hands on her hips and hovering over Alec and her baby who was now hiding from her. “Alec!” She touched his shoulder, afraid to smack him like she usually would because he seemed so fragile. Alec dragged his hand down his face and looked at Fred who was tugging at his trousers. 

“Yesterday,” he answered her. But as he scooped up her son again and settled him in his lap, she knew that maybe he hadn’t noticed it until yesterday, but they both knew now that Fred had gotten it into his head a while ago. Fred had cried for his dad several times over the past few weeks. Ellie felt like an idiot because Fred hadn’t been calling for his actual _father_ , but for Alec. 

“Ellie, I’m sorry,” Alec apologized, seizing Fred’s hand in his before he got his fingers into the food. “I keep telling him I’m not his Dad, but he’s not listening,” he sighed and stopped Fred from lunging across the table. He tugged him back into his lap and started filling a plate for her son. 

“At least he doesn’t remember his real father,” Ellie said and slumped into the chair next to him. 

“He won’t remember him,” Alec assured her as he held out a carrot to Fred. “But I’m not his Dad.” Ellie marveled at the fact that although he denied it, he had her picky toddler that usually fought her over any kind of healthy food, eating out of his hand. 

“You should have told him to call you Alec,” Ellie said, upset that her own son was choosing a man that wasn’t his parent over her. 

“You could’ve told him that or told him to call me uncle or something,” Alec snapped as he fed her son. And there it was again, their inability to define their perplexing relationship. Ellie didn’t know what they had been doing before, or what they were doing now that they’d crossed the line that they’d been tiptoeing around for weeks. But she was realizing that it wasn’t just about Alec and her, but about Alec and her children. She recalled the moment she’d witnessed in the sitting room with the three of them, and all the other times she’d seen Alec with one or both of her children. It was too late to take a step back and Ellie was surprised by how badly she wanted to take a step forward. 

“I suppose it could’ve been worse, he could’ve imprinted on the landlord or the postman,” Ellie joked. Alec wasn’t amused. Fred had had enough and slid off of his lap. He scuttled under the table and into his lair.

“Ellie, I’m not his father,” Alec repeated, vehemently. He pushed Fred’s plate away and slouched down in his chair. Crossing his arms over his chest, he scowled at the food that she’d laid out for four people, none of whom wanted to eat it. 

“You should eat,” Ellie said and took one of the plates. She started to fill it like he’d done for Fred, but he stopped her, shaking his head. 

“’m not hungry,” he grouched at her and added, “I ate earlier with Tom.” Ellie had seen Tom grab the pizza box, but she’d also seen the damage he’d done last night to the feast he’d ordered with Alec’s apparently limitless credit card, and was well aware that her growing teenager could empty an entire fridge by himself. 

“Fine.” She dumped the ruined salad into the bowl and threw the plate down on the table, knocking over one of the plastic cups. They sulked in an uncomfortable silence that was only broken by the animal noises Fred was making in his cave as he babbled to himself in his own made-up language. After several minutes had passed, Ellie pulled herself together and looked over at the man less than a foot away from her. Alec was withdrawn and Ellie wanted to reach him, but didn’t know how. 

“Lunch with Tom went well?” she asked with a forced casualness she didn’t feel. 

Alec nodded. “He’s a good lad.”

“How was Devon?” Ellie asked, remembering the last time she’d gone to Exeter with Tom and Joe during a hot spell four years ago. She tried to black Joe out of that pleasant memory. 

“ _Awful_ ,” Alec groaned and scraped his hands down his face. Ellie stared at him and Alec straightened up, hastily explaining, “There were a lot of tourists, and students, and too many crowds, but lunch was fine, and Tom’s fine. Ellie, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I talked to him and it’s all fine.” 

Ellie scrutinized him, his messy hair, and his bleached white face. He was lying to her about something, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Bleach. Her eyes widened. She’d assumed that it was because she’d done the laundry after he left, but it wasn’t. 

“You smell like bleach,” she realized. Alec couldn’t deny it. Ellie leant forward in her chair, firmly taking his face between her hands before he could escape her. She sniffed his hair; bleach and disinfectant. Alec tried to shake her off, but Ellie wasn’t finished examining him. 

“What happened today?” she demanded, carding her fingers through his thick hair. 

“Miller,” Alec sighed and curled his fingers around one of her wrists. His attempts to pull away were feeble and she’d already found what she had feared.

“Jesus, Alec, what the hell is this?” She gently probed the bump on the side of his head, but his hand tightened on her wrist. 

“Fell down the stairs last week,” he lied to her, yanking himself free from her. He rubbed at the sore spot, grimacing. 

“That’s bullshit,” Ellie hissed. “You didn’t have that this morning.” She’d had her hands in his hair many, many, many times over the last few days and she’d explored every inch of his head. She felt a little warmer at the mere memory of her fingers tugging at his hair last night. 

“What happened?” she repeated. She closed in on him, catching at his waist before he could get up out of his chair. Alec winced and actually shoved her away. He pressed his hand to his side for a second, but Ellie noted it. 

“What happened?” Ellie snarled. 

“I fell in the loo after we got back. The floor was wet and I slipped-”

“Don’t lie to me,” she growled. “I’m tired of it!”

“I had another incident, lost my balance, but I’m fine now,” he insisted. Ellie’s eyes searched his face. She recalled the moment in the sitting room that had struck her as heartwarming, but now left her chilled. 

“Oh, my god, you were with Tom,” she whispered. Alec’s eyes skittered away from her. “Were you in Devon?” 

“Yeah,” Alec confirmed, expelling a breath. 

“Was it bad?” She already knew it must’ve been. Her son had been close to tears, and although Alec had tried to sleep it off and appeared to have recovered, he still looked as if he’d been run over by a lorry. 

Fred scampered out from under the table and Alec’s eyes followed him, his face softening. Ellie combed her fingers through Alec’s hair so that he was forced to look at her. 

“Alec, what are you not telling me?” she asked softly. Alec swallowed hard and his eyes slid away from her. “Alec?” she whispered, moving so that her eyes were level with his. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.” She was gentle with him, but she had him cornered and he knew it. He sucked in a ragged breath and then another one. His eyes were starting to glitter again, and Ellie knew that if she pushed him a little bit more…

“Alec?”

Alec abruptly stood and stalked out of the room. Ellie stopped him before he could make it into the sitting room. She blocked his path, planting herself in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. He supported himself against the doorjamb and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“Damn it, Ellie,” he swore. “All I’m asking for is three more-” He halted in mid-sentence, paling. His eyes were on the door and Ellie heard the sound of an engine cutting off. 

“It’s your sister,” he predicted, cursing under his breath. His eyes went for the sitting room, and then the staircase, but Ellie grabbed him, dragging him into the kitchen with her and preventing his quick exit. 

A car door slammed and footsteps followed. Alec reached for her and Ellie thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t. He took the clip out of her hair and her hair tumbled around her face, curling at her collar. With nimble fingers he fixed her hair and the collar of her shirt. It was then that Ellie realized that he was trying to hide the mark he’d left on her neck, and that there was only one person that he was worried about seeing the evidence of how much he wanted her. Ellie would’ve been angry and humiliated if it wasn’t for the way his eyes longingly swept over her, and his knuckles grazed her cheek. The door opened and he moved as far away from her as possible, casually leaning against the counter, out of the immediate line of sight. 

“El?” Lucy called. “Tom? Fred? _El_?” Lucy poked her head into the kitchen and spotted Ellie.

“Hiya, Luce, wasn’t expecting you,” Ellie greeted her, nonchalantly.

“Didn’t have time to ring, I drove straight here when I got out of work,” Lucy said from the hallway as she shed her coat and hung it up. “Tom’s not here, is he?” 

“He’s upstairs in his room, playing some video game,” Ellie sighed, shoving her hair back from her forehead. She peeked at Alec who looked even paler than earlier and had a white knuckle grip on the edge of the counter.

“Good, I need to talk to you alone, it’s about Tom.” Lucy walked into the kitchen and threw her purse on the counter, finally noticing Alec at the other end of it with his arms crossed and his eyes downcast. Lucy froze. And then Ellie watched as her tiny older sister grew three times taller in a manner that she was all too familiar with whenever her sister got royally pissed off. 

“What the bloody hell is he doing here?” Lucy demanded, stabbing a finger in Alec’s direction, but turning to Ellie as if Alec wasn’t even there. 

“Paperwork,” Alec blurted out. Both sisters looked at him and Alec stumbled on, “Ellie’s starting her job in a few weeks and I’m the one who gave her the reference, so I um-” Alec motioned to Ellie, silently urging her to work with him.

“There’s a lot of red tape I have to go through: background checks, bureaucratic stuff. And Alec-”

“Bullshit!” Lucy interrupted her harshly. Her eyes were blazing and Ellie shrunk beneath her smaller elder sister’s fury. “I didn’t believe it the first time you tried to feed me that lie, and I’m certainly not buying it this time, even if you did offer me another hundred quid,” she snapped. She glanced between the two of them and drummed her fingers on the counter. Shaking her head, she looked up at the ceiling. 

“I’m an idiot. I should have known,” she muttered. She shot Ellie a glare that she hadn’t used on her baby sister since the day she’d told Ellie she’d shagged the CMO and that he was certain that Alec was dying. “ _He_ was here the whole bloody weekend.” Alec opened his mouth to come up with some ridiculous excuse but Ellie put her foot down. 

“So, what if he was?” 

Lucy pushed off from the counter, meeting Ellie in the middle of the kitchen. 

“That man is a bad influence on you and your boys. I set you up with Geoffrey because he is a good man and he can take care of and provide for you and your boys-”

“I don’t _want_ Geoffrey!” Ellie cut her off. 

“You lied to me!” Lucy went on. 

“I didn’t lie, you just went on thinking what you wanted to believe. But Luce, you’re not me. You have no idea what I went through, what I’m going through, what I need and what I _want_ -”

“Yes, I do!” Lucy argued. “I was there, after _he_ pushed you over that edge. I was with you every bleeding second and I took care of those boys when you couldn’t because _he_ -”

“It wasn’t his fault!” Ellie defended Alec. “You and I both know that it was _Joe_ that crushed me. You can blame Alec all you want but it had nothing to do with him-”

Alec coughed and both women whipped around. He cleared his throat and pointed at the doorway behind them. 

“I’m going to leave now.” Lucy stepped in front of him before he could get more than three feet. Ellie marveled at the fact that her sister could intimidate a man twice her size. It would’ve been comical on a different day.

“I told you to stay away from her,” Lucy hissed. Alec’s jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists at his sides. 

“Get out of my way,” he ordered her, but the heat wasn’t there because something about Lucy did frighten him. 

“Oh, no, _Alec_ , please pull up a seat. I’m sure El would _love_ to hear your side of the story about what happened at Elmore today,” she urged him with a sickeningly sweet smile that made Alec blanch and Ellie’s stomach churn.

“What’s going on, Luce?” she asked as Alec staggered to the counter, his eyes round and his face ghostly white. 

“I told you that I work with Jeanine that used to work at the Traders, right?” Ellie nodded, but her eyes were on Alec over her sister’s shoulder. He reached into his pocket, and Ellie knew that he was taking another pair of those pills that he was so dependent upon, and that whatever it was that Lucy was going to tell her (once she finally got to the point of the story) couldn’t be good. 

“You know she got married a few years back and moved out of Broadchurch. Well, her husband works as a guard down at Elmore Prison, the same place that-”

“That’s where Joe is,” Ellie remembered. All of the blood drained from her face and her eyes jumped to Alec. Avoiding her eyes, he cupped his hand over his mouth as if he was going to be sick. 

“I’m surprised he’s here at all because according to Jeanine’s husband, a DI Hardy had a heart attack down at the prison this afternoon.” 

“It wasn’t a heart attack!” Alec ground out between clenched teeth. Lucy snorted. 

“According to Ian, it certainly looked like one. He thought for sure that DI Hardy had dropped dead in the car park, that’s why he called Jeanine because he knows that I’m your sister and T-”

“It wasn’t a heart attack,” Alec insisted, folding his arms over his chest. “I’m already in heart failure. A second heart attack would’ve killed me,” he spat, not even realizing what he’d inadvertently revealed to Ellie. _Heart failure_. Ellie latched onto those two terrifying words and nearly missed what Lucy said next. 

“El, I don't even care if you’re sleeping with him anymore, but I cannot believe that you let him take Tom into that prison to visit his father.”

Ellie tore her eyes from Alec and snapped back to her sister, because surely she must’ve heard her wrong. She must’ve misheard both of them.

“Sorry.” Shaking her head and blinking rapidly, she refocused on her sister. “He did what?” 

“Alec took Tom to see his father,” Lucy repeated herself slowly, glaring daggers at Alec across the room. Ellie stared at Alec, struggling to comprehend everything that was being thrown at her. Lucy was still talking and Alec was furious. The blood that Ellie had lost in her face flooded Alec’s neck, cheeks and ears. 

“I’ll give you two hundred quid to shut up right now,” he was snarling at Lucy. 

“You would have to make it a thousand because I am nowhere near finished,” Lucy warned him.

“Oh, I think you’ve already said enough,” he growled, his Scottish accent roughening each razor-sharp word as he focused his attention solely on her sister, so that he wouldn’t have to face Ellie. “This whole bloody town is in everyone else's business. There's no sense of privacy and it doesn't even stop at the towns limits. I'm tired of all of you running your _stupid_ mouths-”

“Alec!” Ellie shouted over him. Alec shut up, but his eyes didn’t leave Lucy until Ellie had crossed the kitchen and stepped in between them. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were on a spot over her left shoulder, but he couldn’t ignore her. 

“Did you or did you not take my son into a prison to visit his father?” she interrogated him. 

“He did,” Lucy piped up, and Alec called Lucy something foul that Ellie had never heard in her life. “Ian saw both of them and they were with Joe-”

Ellie and Alec both told Lucy to shut up at the same time. Shifting his gaze, he locked eyes with Ellie. Alec wasn’t going to lie to her, not this time. Lucy again tried to cut in, but Ellie snapped at her without breaking eye contact with Alec. 

“Go home, Luce. This is between me and Alec.”

“Fine, but I’m taking Fred. He shouldn’t have to hear that kind of language or be in the same house as _him_.” 

Alec closed his eyes and said something else that would’ve made Ellie’s mother roll over in her grave. Lucy retrieved her purse and hunted Fred down in the sitting room. Ellie waited impatiently, listening to Alec taking in deep breaths and counting to a hundred and forty-two under his breath. He didn’t open his eyes until they heard Fred’s voice and Lucy slam the door behind both of them. 

“Did you take my son to visit his father?” Ellie asked him, her voice dangerously low. 

“Ellie,” Alec sighed, deflating. 

“Answer the bloody question!” Her voice wavered with the anger she couldn’t control. “ _Answer me_!” 

“Yes, I did but-”

Ellie’s hand cracked across his face. Alec lifted his hand to his cheek, stunned. 

“You lied to me! You took my son down there without telling me, when you _knew_ that I didn't want him anywhere near that monster.” 

“I didn’t _want_ to take him in there,” Alec protested, cradling his face. “He asked me to take him.”

“I don't care. You of all people should've known that I didn't want him to go there, or to see _him_ , or to talk to _him_ , or to listen to _him_ , _especially_ after what I found last weekend and turned over to you because I trusted-”

Alec rubbed at his jaw and his eyes darted away from her. 

“Oh, my god,” Ellie gasped, her stomach roiling. “You brought the fucking book in with you, didn’t you? You showed Joe those – those things and my son was right next to you.” She grasped at the counter and gagged. 

“For god’s sake, Ellie, I went in first and did what I had to do, and _then_ I brought your son in because he wanted to see-”

“You collapsed at the prison?” she interrupted him. 

“Yes,” Alec groaned, wincing as he probed the reddening skin where she’d slapped him. 

“How long were you out for?” she queried. Alec frowned at her and then reluctantly gave the question some thought.

“I don’t know, maybe five, ten minutes?” 

“You were out for ten minutes and my son never got his hands on that book?” Ellie’s voice was shaking, and she was fighting down the urge to retch into the sink. 

“He picked it up,” Alec admitted, biting down on his lip. “But Ellie, I asked him, and he saw the book, but he said he didn’t open it. I know he didn’t because I told him that it was his father’s-”

Ellie’s hand cracked across the same cheek and Alec stumbled into the counter. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever been so angry. It was one thing for Alec to backstab her, but he’d dragged her son into it. He’d brought Tom to see his father, when she’d told him on Saturday that her son would never set foot in there until he was an adult and out of her jurisdiction. And then he’d let Tom hold onto his father’s filthy possessions that no one should have ever seen, especially not her child. 

She stormed out of the kitchen and hollered for Tom. 

“It’s not his fault.” Alec’s voice was muffled because he still had his hand pressed against his face. She should’ve felt sorry at the pathetic sight of him, hunched against the counter, but all she saw was red as she marched back into the room. “Donae be too hard on him, he needed-”

“Not only did you lie to me, but you encouraged my son to lie to me, and I'm going to talk to him. But he is a thirteen-year-old boy, and you are an adult, and a former DI, and you _saw_ what that bastard was capable of while my son has not. I don’t care what he said to convince you, you should have known better, and I _trusted_ you with him.”

“’m sorry,” Alec apologized, cringing as he touched a sore spot on his jaw line. 

“Do you have _any_ idea what you’ve done?” 

Alec bowed his head and wiped at the corner of his mouth with his fingertips. 

“God, Alec, I’m so upset right now that I could kill you.” She looked up at the ceiling and fisted her hands, digging her nails into her palms in an effort to check herself before her son saw her in that state. A sound brought her gaze back to Alec and any control she might’ve found, she immediately lost, because he was fucking _laughing_ at her. 

“What the fuck is so funny?” 

Alec choked on his laughter and started coughing. He shoved past her and bent over the sink, coughing and sputtering. The coughing stopped, but he stayed like that with his head hung over the basin. Ellie looked over just in time to see him spit out another drop of blood. Scraping his knuckles over his mouth, he gave her a smirk that brought the bile up into her esophagus again. 

“I don’t think you’ll have to kill me,” he said, switching on the tap to wash out the blood and spit. “Ellie, I’m already dying.” 

“You’re getting a pacemaker.” 

Alec shook his head and stuck his blood-smeared hand under the water. Ellie was struck by the memory of the evening he’d burned his hand on the stove, before she went on her date with Geoffrey, and he’d teased her that he might die before she got the chance to finish the job off. He hadn’t been serious then, but he was now. He turned off the faucet and cleared his throat. 

“I um went to the doctor yesterday,” he said, running his tongue over his teeth and bracing himself against the sink. “He won’t sign off on the pacemaker.” 

Ellie’s heart stilled in her chest and she wondered if this was what Alec felt every day. She was finding it hard to breathe and the four walls of the room were closing in around her, suffocating and trapping her in the kitchen with a liar or a dead man. 

“You’re lying.” She shook her head at him, her heartrate escalating, and her heartbeat thudding in her ears. “This is some screwed up attempt for you to get sympathy out of me, but I’m not having it.”

“Ellie, I lied to you yesterday, but I’m not lying now.” He was completely sober and Ellie knew that he was telling her the truth. For the first time, Ellie saw _pity_ in his eyes as he looked at her. “Your sister was right,” he said with one last gasp of hysterical laughter. “I’ll be dead before Christmas.” He pressed his lips together, but he couldn’t hide the quiver or the wateriness of his eyes that confirmed it all. 

Lucy had been right about _everything_. Alec had lied to her, he had broken her trust, he had broken her heart, and he was going to hurt her even more when he abandoned both her and her two boys who had gotten so attached to him. Ellie wanted to strangle him and hold him at the same time. But the only words that came out of her mouth were: “Get out.” 

“I’ll get Tom and then I’ll be gone,” he assured her, his voice breaking over the word gone. He left the room, giving her a couple of minutes to compose herself before she heard them on the stairs. They went into the sitting room, but Ellie could hear them from where she stood, shuddering against the counter. 

“But you said you weren’t leaving ‘til Monday. Can’t you stay a couple more days?” Tom pleaded with him. 

“I can’t stay here, Tom,” Alec replied. “Your mother’s not happy with me.” 

“Is it because-”

“No, it’s got nothing to do with that,” Alec reassured him. Ellie tip toed closer to the doorway and a lump formed at the sight of Alec with his hands on her son’s shoulders, stooping slightly so that he was on eye level with her growing son. 

“Tom, just because I’m leaving, it doesn’t mean that I’m gone. If your mother or you ever need anything, you can call me or that number, alright?”

Tom nodded. 

“You’re going to take care of them,” Alec said and Tom nodded again. “Good lad.” Alec ruffled Tom’s hair and straightened up.

“Is she mad?” Tom sniffled. 

“Not with you.” Alec gazed down at her son, and Ellie saw an expression there that confirmed what she’d already suspected. He loved both of her sons. “Tom, I’m proud of you,” Alec praised him, brushing Tom’s hair back from his forehead in the same manner he’d done for Fred earlier. “Your mother might be a wee bit upset now because of me.” That was an understatement. Ellie was a mess and Alec wasn’t helping as he went on, “But you should tell her everything that you said to your father today, and why you wanted to go, and she’s going to be very, very proud of you.” 

“Alright?” Alec’s voice was audibly breaking. 

Tom nodded and Alec held out his hand to Tom for him to shake. But Tom did something that surprised both her and Alec. He flung his arms around Alec, hugging him. Alec seemed unsure of what to do for a moment, but then he wrapped his arms around Tom, holding him. He shut his eyes and then gently pushed Tom away from him. 

“Look after yourself Tom and them,” he said gruffly, tilting his head toward the kitchen. His eyes met Ellie’s and a tear fell from his eye before he could hide it. Alec took Tom by the shoulders and steered him toward the kitchen where Ellie was waiting for him. He gazed at Ellie over the top of Tom’s head, and then Tom joined her, and Alec walked out of the house for the very last time. 

“It wasn’t his fault, I made him take me there,” Tom insisted, defending a man that had once accused him of murder. His face was red but he was bravely struggling with his tears. “I had to go, Mum. I needed Dad to understand what he’d done to us. I would’ve gone by myself but Alec caught me, and I – I didn’t want to go by myself, so I forced Alec to go with me.” Tom’s voice cracked and Ellie drew him into her arms. 

“You didn’t force him to do anything, sweetheart,” Ellie soothed him, rubbing circles on his back. Tom protested weakly but Ellie couldn’t take it. 

“Why don’t you tell me what you said to your Dad,” she said gently, hoping that it would prevent them both from breaking down. 

She sat Tom down at the table and he told her what he’d said to his father. Alec was right. Tom had needed to go there just as badly as she needed to go to the sentencing. Alec had tried to stop them both, but they’d went anyway, and yet he had gone with them, even though it had been the last thing he’d wanted to do. 

And Alec was right. She was very, very proud of her son.

“Is he coming back?” Tom asked anxiously and Ellie was reminded of the first time he’d asked her that on a cold morning in March as they watched Alec leave. 

“No, sweetheart,” Ellie told him quietly, pulling him against her as they both started to cry. “Alec’s not coming back. Not this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve had that scene in my head for a very long time. Not sure when I’ll be able to get the next chapter up, but hopefully you’ll recover by then.


	31. Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t thank you enough for the reviews, comments and kudos! Special thanks to nannyogg/mykelara for her constant support and to pgilmour75 for her advice. I tried to trim this chapter but it wouldn’t cooperate. 
> 
> **REMINDER: I have OCs in place of Tess (Vicky), Dave (Cooper) and Daisy (Keira). When I started this story and created my OCs, I had only watched Season 1 once and I had no idea what actually happened at Sandbrook with the exception of the lost pendant, the break-in and Hardy taking the fall for his wife. So the Sandbrook case is AU.**
> 
> Dear SEA, I’m sorry for that time I pushed you into one of those flowery thorn bushes because we were running from a “skunk”. But it was dark and you totally thought that fluffy cat was a skunk too and you _laughed_. I don’t want to forget that sound.

There was a pathway that wound up into the cliffs behind Miller’s cottage on the edge of Broadchurch. It was a sandy, rocky path bordered by swaying sea grass, wild overgrown shrubbery and weeds, and a hideous thorny monstrosity that was now bursting with fuchsia flowers that almost disguised the ugliness and deadliness of the thing. A month ago, Alec had followed Ellie up that moonlit path, struggling to keep up with her and wondering if she was trying to kill him. The sunlight painted the path in a whole new light. If it wasn’t for his sleeve snagging on that stupid thorn bush, he would’ve missed the steep decline that led to Ellie’s favorite spot, overlooking the water. Alec was halfway down the death trap before he realized where his feet had taken him. 

He waited for the vertigo and the terror of the sloping ground sliding out from underneath him. The fear of falling never hit. Instead he was struck by the memory of sitting beside Ellie and holding onto her hand. Blinking it away, he sat down on the ledge and looked out at the horizon. 

He didn’t feel as small, as powerless, or as helpless as the last time he’d been here, with the waves lapping at the eroding beach and the rocks below them. Ellie wasn’t with him, but Alec could feel her presence lingering in the form of the vivid memory that had preceded a first kiss shared in a kitchen, during the last seconds of her birthday. He was dying and he was losing the one thing he’d been desperately holding onto. His fear of the ocean seemed ridiculous in comparison to the painful emptiness, he now felt in Ellie and her boys’ absence. 

That stupid little cottage held a piece of his heart that he never knew he was missing until Ellie and those two boys had stolen it. Fred and Tom were the sons he would’ve been proud to call his own and Ellie - Ellie was the woman that had taught him how to love and trust someone else when he didn’t think he could anymore. Everything he had left was locked up in that cottage surrounded by a wall of hedges and rampant greenery. Unlike the last two times he’d gotten locked out of their home, it was still daylight and he had his mobile and coat. He took inventory again; finding the fucking book that had burned through everything he had left, his wallet with enough cash and credit to get him far, far away from this small-minded gossiping town, six pills that would last him through tomorrow _if_ he was cautious, and three photographs. 

He opened his wallet and took out a photograph of two beautiful girls on bicycles, laughing a few short hours before the horrible deaths that they were riding towards. Alec saw them in his nightmares, and on the streets, and in the faces of every girl he passed. Sometimes he thought he could hear their laughter, even though he’d never met them. He’d dug so deeply through their lives that he felt like he knew them, but that case had consumed him. When he’d finally closed that file and had handed it off to someone more capable than himself, he knew that he’d made the right decision. He was toxic, and he left damage and destruction in the wake of everything he touched. At least now, someone else could solve it and fix the mistakes he’d made that had ended in disappointment, grief and crushed hopes. 

The second photograph Cooper had extracted from a mess of sticky notes, tacky magnets, and the evidence of the two and a half years that had passed since he’d walked out of Vicky and Keira’s lives. Again, he tried to see some resemblance in that striking young woman to the little girl he’d hugged for the last time, and left screaming and sobbing on the front stoop with Iris. Although Vicky frequently emailed him and texted pictures of Keira, she was still a stranger to him. She looked so much like her mother that people used to joke that Keira wasn’t his. He wondered sometimes, but when Vicky told him that Cooper was the only one, he believed her. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; Alec loved his daughter more than anyone or anything else, and he’d given her up because he loved her, and now he might not see her again. Looking at the photograph pained him. He preferred the old pictures he had in his phone of the little girl who had loved him. Tucking it away, he tried not to think about how he’d never know that unrecognizable stunning young woman she’d grown into. 

The third photograph was something that Ellie had torn apart and tossed aside in a rage after Joe’s dirty little secret had surfaced in a book that had started a fire that Alec hadn’t been able to extinguish. Alec had cleaned up the mess and salvaged what he could of over fourteen years of memories that had been tainted by a man who was present in nearly all of them. This was the last one he’d found. He’d almost missed it because it had been stuck beneath the wooden chest in Ellie’s room. Maybe it was because it was the final piece of a shattered puzzle, but that photograph had been too hard to let go. 

Ellie had Fred in her arms and Joe’s arm had obviously been around her shoulders, before she ripped him out of that picture. Tom had a giant stuffed animal in his arms that he must’ve won because they were at the fair. The stupid fair that Alec had accidentally stumbled upon the day he landed himself in that abominable town. The lights, the noise and the awful soundtrack had almost sent him over the edge; but he’d pushed his way through the crowd, bumping into and tripping over those smiley people, including a blissfully happy mother with her two sons and a man that was three weeks away from exploding. They’d passed right by each other, unaware of the storm that would arrive three weeks later, when they met over the body of a boy that her husband had murdered. That unstoppable storm had blown through and destroyed them, and it kept on coming. No matter how hard Alec tried, he couldn’t reverse the damage or make her or her sons happy in the same way as Joe had, because he had become a part of that storm the moment he’d told her the truth. And then he’d reached out to her, never expecting that he wouldn’t be able to hold onto her, never expecting that he would abandon her at the worst possible time in the midst of the debris he left in his wake. 

He had to let go of them but he didn’t know how. His hand clenched around the photograph, bending it, but it wouldn’t break. Alec couldn’t bring himself to rip it up again, couldn’t bear the thought of tearing Ellie or Tom or Fred apart. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he let go of it one finger at a time. He held it out over the roiling water beneath him that had drowned him once over thirty years ago, but still had a pull on him like an undertow. 

And he let go. 

The wind picked up, blowing his hair back from his forehead and the photograph was flung against the sandy ledge beside him. It stuck there, quivering, as it stubbornly fought the power of the wind and refused to blow away. Alec stared at it and as the wind swept over him, he slapped his hand down to stop the photograph from being swept up along with the salty air that carried the taste of the ocean below him. He took one last look at the picture and folded it into his wallet behind the other two. 

Getting to his feet, he climbed the steep incline and headed towards Broadchurch. He should’ve called for a car and had Tom gather up his few belongings and put them outside for him to collect. But he wasn’t ready to let go. He couldn’t leave Broadchurch. Not yet. 

He paused in front of the despicable thorn bush that was blooming with flowers that were the same shade of pink as the trampled flower he’d taken out of his coat, and handed to Ellie in a parking lot, after her son had destroyed some poor schmuck’s garden and banned them both from a grocery store. 

Alec hesitated and then thrust his hand into the center of it. The thorny branches scratched and cut him and it hurt. He painstakingly snapped off the biggest and brightest flower, and retrieved it without crushing a single petal. Then he carefully tucked it into his coat and slowly continued onwards, away from the cottage, and into the heart of that stupid town that had brought them together and had brought him _home_.

*

The sun was setting when Alec entered the police station where he’d spent so many days and nights, grappling with an unthinkable crime that had slept next to his irksome DS for fifty-nine agonizing days. Fifty-nine days, that was all it took for Joe to break beneath the weight of the crime he’d committed and the life of the boy he allegedly “loved” that he’d so greedily stifled. Fifty-nine days, that was all it took for Alec to break Ellie and touch someone for the first time in months. He hadn’t been able to stop touching her after that, and Ellie had held onto him and _trusted_ him. And Alec had broken that trust. 

As he removed the crumpled brown bag from his coat, ruined by the fingerprints of too many people and too many lives it had destroyed, Alec walked through those doors for the last time. He was redirected to one of his former DC’s that had been promoted to a DS, filling the position that Ellie had vacated. Alec couldn’t remember the woman’s name and he didn’t know or care who had taken his former office, his old desk, and the old sofa where Ellie had sat and offered him food, and conversation, and had made a valiant attempt to bring him back to _life_. 

He handed off that bloody book and those filthy incriminating photographs that he tried to tell himself were solely responsible for his loss. He wanted to blame Ellie’s disgusting destructive ex-husband, he wanted to blame Ellie’s nosy loathsome sister, but it was no one’s fault but his own. Lucy was right. And Alec could snarl at her, and yell at her, and call her every name he could think of, but that secret was too big to keep hidden within the pages of a book. And _his_ secret was too big to be kept within a weakening muscle, too big to be caged within ribs, too big to be hidden beneath layers of tissue and skin that were now stretched too thin across his emaciated body. He’d given himself five days, and Lucy had snatched three of them away from him by telling Ellie the _truth_. Now, as he scrubbed his blood-stained hands in the men’s room, he wondered if Lucy had actually made it easier for him, and Ellie, and the boys to part ways. He’d said goodbye to them in some manner; with words that stopped just shy of the truth that they couldn’t possible understand, with warm embraces, with hands that tried to hold onto them for a little bit longer and fix anything he could, and with lips that silently and wordlessly expressed emotions too strong to voice. 

He splashed water on his face, looked at the stranger in the mirror, and ducked his whole head beneath the faucet. The smell of bleach and disinfectant clung to him. Even after washing out his mouth over and over again, he couldn’t rid himself of the coppery taste of his own blood or stop himself from imagining that he could see red in the running water. He didn’t need to check his reflection again; he already knew what he’d become. He was a broken man who was beaten down, exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to find the courage to let go. 

Shutting the tap off, Alec shook out his wet hair and left the place that had claimed so many of his hours, and had fostered a relationship that he’d never expected or intended to continue. He left behind that bloody book, hoping that the fire had finally been contained and buried deep within the bowels of the basement in a box of evidence for a case that would stay permanently closed. He wished that cataloguing and boxing that thing up was as easy as staunching emotions and feelings that were threatening to kill him, as he turned into a man that broke people he cared for as easily as a wave broke on a shore. 

*

Darkness snuck up on him as he walked through Broadchurch. He took two more of his bitter pills and sank down on a bench on the side of a grassy hill where he’d once sat with Ellie and the disagreeable vicar. Time passed slowly, and Alec hated every minute that he was left alone with his guilt, his bittersweet memories, and the thought of the storm building within him that he wouldn’t survive. He took out his phone and called his daughter twice, getting the same message that the voicemail box was full. He considered texting her, but there were only so many characters he could fit into one text, and even if he had a whole book to fill he wouldn’t know where to begin, or how to explain why he left her almost three years ago and that he was about to leave her forever. He fought the compulsion for as long as he could, but a thumbprint over Ellie’s contact made the decision for him.

She didn’t pick up the first time but at least he could leave _her_ a voicemail. He was brief, even though he wanted to say so much more that wouldn’t fit the time limit. Alec wondered why everything suddenly had limits. Maybe it was because he was running out of time, running out of words, running out of breaths, and running out of heartbeats as a storm threatened to close in on that weakening organ at any given moment. 

Ellie rang him back within fifteen minutes. 

“ _Where are you_?” No hello or greeting, he must have been rubbing off on her. 

“On a bench,” he answered. Ellie snorted and Alec thought there might be a glimmer of hope after all. 

“ _Are you still in Broadchurch_?” 

“No, Miller, I walked to London.” He knew his sarcasm had earned himself a roll of her eyes. 

“ _Alec, there are a hundred benches in Broadchurch_ -”

“Don’t be daft, Miller, there’s probably closer to two hundred,” he quipped and Alec could almost see her shaking her head at him. 

“ _Are you near the water_?” 

“Of course, I’m near the water. This is a coastal town in Britain. Everything is on the water or within five hundred feet-”

“ _Alec_ ,” Ellie sighed, her patience wearing thin. Alec sighed too, wishing that they could’ve kept up that old repertoire that he already missed for a wee bit longer. 

“I’m near the church,” he told her. 

“ _I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes_.” She hung up before he could get another word in. He stretched out his limbs and squinted at the time. Only five hours had passed since Lucy had swept in and out of the house, planting a ticking time bomb that Alec had detonated with a few short sentences. Alec didn’t think that was enough time for Ellie to recover, but he couldn’t leave it alone. 

He had no idea where she was or what kind of state she was in, but Alec had some time to get his nerves and rising anxiety under control. He’d walked all over town and was still running on an adrenaline rush that he knew would end with him crashing at some point. He strode through the cemetery, winding and weaving between the crooked, dilapidated headstones that were weathered from a century of storms and flooding, until the scent of fresh dirt assaulted his nose and the headstones were upright, polished and more ordered. Flowers, flags and other keepsakes littered the graves as he got closer and closer to the church. 

He almost tripped over Danny’s grave. Someone had clumsily stuck a pinwheel right in the middle of the unaligned path that organized the graves more or less into lines. He caught himself against the black shining marble that bore the boy’s name in large block letters and shadowed a pile of stuffed animals and bouquets of wilted and dried flowers that no one could miss. The headstone stood out in stark contrast from the graves that surrounded it. The entire town had pitched in to make sure that Danny would always be remembered. 

Alec crouched down and picked up one of the stuffed animals. He couldn’t tell what kind of animal it was in the dark, but it was the same color and size as the cheap unicorn Tom had purchased with the last of his tickets for his baby brother. Alec resettled it against the black marble that sparkled and glittered in the soft moonlight. He aligned the rest of the overturned stuffed menagerie with it and plucked the pinwheel out of the path, replanting it next to Danny’s grave. A rock caught his attention and he picked it up, turning it over between his fingers.

“Fred put that there.”

Alec startled and dropped the rock. His heart fluttered in his chest. She was silhouetted against the backdrop of that endless sky full of stars and moonlight. He didn’t need the light to recognize her; the bright orange jacket practically glowed in the dark. Ellie knelt next to him and put down a handful of mismatched flowers. 

“Are these from Fred too?” He touched one of the yellow things that had already shed half of its petals.

“No, and _no_ , I didn’t raid someone’s garden,” she assured him. They smirked at one another before Ellie looked away. Raising her hand, she reverently traced the letters of Danny’s name.

“It’s almost been a year,” she said softly. “Since Danny died, since Joe took his life, since we met…” 

“He would’ve been twelve last month,” Alec realized. They sat in silence, listening to wind rustling through the leaves and a nocturnal animal darting through the ancient tombstones and the underbrush. Alec reached into his coat and removed the flower with care. Cupping it in his hand, he laid it next to Ellie’s wildflowers. It was slightly crumpled but all six of the bright petals were still intact. 

“Oh, Alec,” Ellie sighed. Her fingertips brushed over the shallow cuts and scratches that were scattered across his hand and wrist. He looked at her, and she ducked her head and rummaged through her purse. Wielding a small bottle of scented disinfectant, she squeezed some of it out onto the back of his hand. He’d had enough sanitizer for one day. 

“I already washed them, I even used soap.” He started to wipe it off but she caught his hand between hers, gently rubbing the alcohol over every scrape and red line. Her curls tumbled into her eyes and hid the rest of her face from him. He had to resist the urge to push them back and touch her as she kept running her thumb over his knuckles long after his skin was dry. 

“I’m sorry I slapped you,” Ellie apologized, peering through her curls at him, “Well, maybe not the first time.” Alec snorted.

“I deserved it.” He expelled a breath and tugged his hand from hers. Ellie shoved her hair out of her face, eyeing him with concern. 

“You were coughing up blood,” she blurted out. 

“Yeah, bit down on my tongue or my lip or something.” He prodded the corner of his mouth and grimaced. “Remind me never to make you angry again.”

“I’m still upset with you,” she said and pushed herself to her feet. Alec used the huge headstone as a crutch and pulled himself up to follow her. 

“Miller,” he called. “ _Miller_!” Cursing her and the dizziness that accompanied standing on his two feet again after being on his knees for so long, he grasped at the tomb in front of Danny’s. Whatever adrenaline that had been driving him was leaving him fast. He closed his eyes for a moment, steadying himself against the rough granite.

“Come on.” Ellie’s persistent voice was closer than he expected. “Come _on_ , Alec.” Ellie ducked beneath his arm, slinging it over her shoulders. She wrapped her arm around his torso, supporting him. 

“I can walk,” he spat, already tired, so tired of the weakness that was becoming more and more evident with each passing day. “Miller, you don’t have to carry me.”

“You carried me,” Ellie shot back, her eyes meeting his. There was a fierceness in her brown eyes that surprised Alec as she went on, “You helped me up, you held me when I wanted to be held, you kept me warm, you minded my children when I needed a break, you _always_ came when I called, and I know that you _tried_ to take care of me and my sons even when you couldn’t.” Ellie held his gaze until she couldn’t anymore and her eyes moved to the church in front of them. 

Alec didn’t know what to say, but he didn’t protest when she started to walk with him, even though by then he had his equilibrium back and was capable of walking on his own. He kept his arm curled around her shoulders, and Ellie kept her arm around his waist until they reached the stone stairs leading up from the cemetery into the church. Ellie let go of him and sat down, resting her forearms on her thighs. Alec did the same, clasping his hands between his knees. 

“I talked to Tom,” Ellie said, refusing to look at him. “You were right,” she reluctantly conceded, “He needed to go, and I am proud of what he did and what he said to his father.” Alec was glad that Ellie agreed with him and that Tom had made his mother proud, but he knew that there was a catch.

“I wish you hadn’t lied to me.” She wrung her fluttering hands. “You should’ve come to me.”

“You wouldn’t have let him go,” Alec argued.

Ellie shook her head. 

“You didn’t want him to go either. Tom told me that you tried to talk him out of it, but do you know what else he told me?” She looked straight at him. Alec felt nauseated because he had forgotten all about _how_ he’d tried to talk Tom out of it. 

“He told me that he knew that I’d found something over the weekend that belonged to his father and that you offered to _show_ it to him. And then you told him that it was in that bloody book!” Ellie exploded. Alec flinched.

“I didn’t know what else to do. He wanted to tell Lucy that you and I were-“

“That’s the stupidest excuse I’ve ever heard!” Ellie’s eyes sparked with that anger he’d felt in the kitchen as she went on, “I don’t care what my sister thinks of us, I never did. You are the only one that worried about what other people thought of us. Even Tom didn’t give a flying shit whether we were fucking or not. I don’t know what your bloody problem was. It was very simple, either you _wanted_ this or you didn’t-”

“God, Ellie,” he groaned, thrusting his fingers into his hair. “Please don’t make this any harder on me.”

“Harder on _you_?” Ellie sputtered. “Are you listening to yourself right now? You’re the one that lied to me-”

“I’m sorry.” He pushed his hair so far back that he almost tore the follicles from his scalp. “I didn’t want to-”

“Oh, _now_ you’re sorry. I _trusted_ you with my thirteen-year-old and you brought him into a room full of _murderers_ , including his father. I don’t think you understand how close I came to committing a homicide in my kitchen, because other than finding out that my son was injured or killed under your watch, there is nothing worse.” 

“He was perfectly safe with me,” he protested. “The guards outnumbered the prisoners and there were younger children than Tom in there.”

“You passed out in a restroom for ten minutes and left him alone with his father and a book-”

“I _know_!” He let go of his hair and glared at her. “Do you have any idea how much I hate myself and my stupid heart-”

“It’s your stupid _head_ and your idiocy that infuriate me.” She was spitting mad, quivering with that uncontainable wrath. “I haven’t even gotten to what Tom told me happened when I trusted you with my baby.” Alec blinked at her and then it all came crashing down around him. 

“ _Shit_ ,” Alec hissed and slumped forward with his head in his hands again. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Ellie’s unsteady voice was almost drowned out by his cursing. 

“Tom told me he came home and Fred was screaming because you blacked out like you did in the restroom.”

“Ellie, I’m-”

“How long were you out for that time?” she asked scathingly. 

“I don’t know,” Alec moaned and dragged his fingers down his face. “Fifteen? Twenty minutes?” He was crushed beneath the memory of Fred’s cries, and that moment of blind panic when he woke up and realized what had happened. His eyes stung and he squeezed them shut. 

“Oh, my god,” Ellie gasped as he brought his closed fist up to his forehead. “It’s happened before, hasn’t it?”

“You made me take him to the bloody beach,” he accused her, warring with the suffocating guilt. “I didn’t want to go.” 

“You could’ve told me!” 

“You thought it was hilarious,” he snarled at her. “When you _knew_ that I-I couldn’t-” He hit himself with his fist. 

“Was he – was he in the water?” she asked and Alec could hear the intense parental fear that only a mother or father would understand. 

“No, god, no, I would’ve told you,” Alec reassured her, although the truth wasn’t much better. “I had an episode on the way back,” he explained and added, “I could’ve dropped your son off one of those death trap cliffs but Mark Latimer caught me.” It took her a full minute to swallow that one and Alec thought she might slap him a third time. 

“How many other times?” Ellie’s voice was terrifyingly quiet. Alec slammed his fist against his forehead, knocking a few memories loose from where they’d been carefully hidden and nearly forgotten. 

“Twice, maybe three times,” he admitted, sighing. “But they were minor, and Chloe was there, and then Tom was there…” It didn’t make the past episodes any better, but now that it was all off his chest, some of the tension left him. He caved in on himself, his arms weakly supporting his weight on his knees. Ellie was silent. Alec thought he found her lashing out easier to take than the clamped bloodless lips that didn’t have anything left to waste on a man that wasn’t worth a breath. 

“ _Ellie_.” He couldn’t get past her name. Five months ago, she was nothing more than an old surname and now suddenly he had an intimacy with her that he’d shattered with a few words. “You knew I was sick,” he went on slowly and carefully, “You must’ve realized that at some point I wouldn’t be able to-”

“I trusted that you would tell me what you could and couldn’t do,” she snapped, “but I always forget about your stupid obstinacy and frightening recklessness.” She glowered at him and then closed her eyes as if she couldn’t even bear the sight of him. Alec waited, gazing out at those moonlit stones. Beside him, Ellie was taking deep breathes. Her voice was calmer than he expected when she spoke. 

“I know how sick you are and I know you’re not perfect, but I’m finding it very hard to forgive you.” 

“I don’t think you should,” Alec said and looked at her startled face. “I’m leaving.”

Ellie sucked in another breath and let it out slowly. 

“Tom said you were leaving Monday to go see your family. Hopefully, by next week I’ll be feeling more charitable so you can come back here to see the boys.”

“Ellie.” He didn’t understand why it was still a challenge for him to get past those two syllables, or why she had to make this so much more difficult for him after everything he’d done. “Ellie, I’m not coming back.” 

“You’ll visit, though,” Ellie said, speaking rapidly, “Once you’ve worked things out with your aunt and your daughter and once we’re settled in Edgewood, you’ll stay with us or we’ll come to you.” 

Alec shook his head.

“Ellie, _no_.”

Ellie jerked away from him, scrambling backwards. Alec stayed where he was and tried to get used to the distance that would grow between them one foot at a time. He was having trouble restraining himself from reaching for her. The moonlight made it easier for him to watch the opposing emotions in her eyes and facial features. 

“How long do you have?” she demanded. 

“They don’t really know, but the chances of me making it to Christmas-” He faltered. It was a little over six months away. “Any attack that I have now could precipitate the later stages of heart failure, or land me in the hospital or instantly kill me. I’m a powder keg that could blow up at any time,” he spat. “I think I’d prefer that instead of the slow decline, when I can barely walk, when I can’t breathe without oxygen, when I’m bedridden or hospitalized or-” He stopped at the sight of Ellie’s tearful eyes. 

“And when will that start?” she wondered. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted. Ellie shook her head at him and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with her finger. “There’s no bloody manual,” he continued, frustrated with her and himself, and the unfairness of it all. “It’s not something I can predict or _control_ -”

“Alec, we can’t control anything, you and I know that more than anyone else,” she reminded him, sniffling. “I know you need to see Iris and your daughter but you’re _fine_ now. Unless you have a heart attack, you’re not going to drop dead next week. Surely, you can come back after-”

“ _No_.” Alec forced the word out and stubbornly plowed on with what he should have done months ago. 

“Why not?” she asked defiantly. Five hours ago, the woman had threatened to kill him, mere minutes ago, she was telling him how much she despised him, and now she wanted to know why he was leaving her. Why couldn’t she stay mad at him? Why couldn’t he leave her? 

“Ellie.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want you to see me like that-”

“I don’t care!” Ellie cried. “I can take care of you when the time comes-”

“I don’t want you to take care of me,” he grinded out between gritted teeth.

“You took care of me,” she retorted. “Why can’t you stop being such a stubborn fuckwit and let me repay-”

“You don’t _owe_ me and you are _not_ indebted to me!” he yelled at her, panting. “If anything, I should be compensating you for what I’ve done to you and your boys.” He leaned back with his elbows on the worn edge of the stone step above him. Tipping his head, the stars spun overhead. “Not even five bloody minutes ago you were reaming into me, reminding me of every reason why I shouldn’t be here or anywhere near your children, and now…” He scrubbed his hands down his face and sat up, struggling past the throbbing ache in his head, in his chest, and throughout his weary body. 

Alec was having difficulty breathing as he looked at the woman in front of him; a woman that was still willing to carry him even after he’d lied to her and broken her trust. The way she could take his breath away had nothing to do with an arrhythmia that could cut off his oxygen supply at any given moment. 

“Ellie, I’m sorry to leave you like this, but you know that I’m right,” he told her, although it killed him to make that admission. “I’m not good for you. I’m a bad influence and I could hurt your sons. The longer we wait, the worse I’ll be and the worse it’ll be for them.”

Ellie couldn’t fight with him and it was destroying her. Alec was watching her crack and the pain in his chest intensified.

“What the fuck am I supposed to tell Fred and Tom?” Ellie asked him caustically. “That you left like Olly’s father did? That you left like their father did?”

She blurred in front of him and Alec pressed his hand flat against his chest. It stuttered again, as it had been sporadically throughout their heated exchange. He was right and she knew it, but it didn’t make it any easier for them to accept the damage he’d leave behind in his wake. He cringed as the pain spread and sliced through him like the truth in her words. He couldn’t tell if it was because of her or because of his heart’s reaction, but it hurt like hell and he couldn’t breathe.

“If you have a heart attack on me right now, I swear to god I’ll murder you myself.”

“You wouldn’t get that lucky,” Alec gasped and winced as his body reacted to his instinct to laugh. He went for his pocket but Ellie got there first. She was so furious with him that she actually split the whole blister pack open, dropping all four pills onto the steps. Swearing, she retrieved two of them. Alec didn’t have his glasses on and he was useless anyway. Ellie shoved two into his palm and groped for the other two. Alec swallowed them, eyes shut. After a moment the rustling became too much. He blindly stretched out his hand for her, snagging the hood of her jacket. 

“I can’t find the last one.” She was panicking. 

“’s fine!” Alec held his pulsing forehead in one hand and insistently tugged at the material of her jacket with his other hand. “Ellie, it’s fine.”

“It’s not _fine_!” Ellie’s voice broke over the word. Alec’s hand slid up her shoulder and into her curls. Cupping the back of her head, he pulled her against his knee. She sat down on the step below him and rested her head against his knee as if she was a child. Alec stroked her hair and rubbed her back. And Ellie wound her arms around his leg like Fred would’ve and tried to muffle her sobs. 

Alec’s arm trembled beneath the weight of his head and the limb collapsed underneath him. He swayed, but her shuddering body kept him upright. He told himself that it was purely physical, but as he kissed her crown and tasted salt on his own lips, he knew that it was the emotions that were draining him.

“You’re not dying,” Ellie told him, roughly wiping her eyes, as she clawed her way up him and onto the step beside him. 

“ _Ellie_.” Alec hid his face behind his hand and held onto her shoulder with the other. 

“They’re wrong,” she insisted and Alec was brought back to that fucking interrogation room all over again. 

“Ellie, they’re not,” he said, letting his hand fall away so he could see her, and she could see the _truth_ in his lined face, his gaunt cheeks, and the bags beneath his eyes. 

“You’re not-” She was going to shatter just like she had that day in that corner, crouched on the floor, with his hand on her shoulder, awkward and hesitant and cold, because it had been so long since he’d _touched_ anyone. And it’d been so long since anyone had _touched_ him, not like she had. 

“You’re not, Alec, tell me you’re not-”

Alec touched her in the same exact spot where he’d left a burn mark months ago, looked her in the eye and said it. 

“I’m _dying_.”

Ellie clapped a hand to her mouth and Alec thought she was going to be sick. But she grabbed a fistful of his coat in her free hand, dragging him down to her. The strength and force of her pull always caught him off guard and he capitulated, powerless against that undertow. He couldn’t slow his fall; it was too fast and too late. She held him like she wanted to drown him in a grief as deep and wide as the ocean, that had resurfaced because he’d dragged it out again, and left her for dead in a riptide he couldn’t rescue her from. They tried to fight against that current, back to solid ground. He knew she’d make it, she had to, but he would never reach the distant shore that taunted him in his nightmares. 

“I’m so sorry, Ellie,” he whispered over and over again. He wrapped his arms around her and knotted his fingers in her hair and her jacket, so that he wouldn’t get swept away in that tide of grief. She soaked the front of his coat with her searing tears, and Alec tried not to think of that day nine months earlier on a bench, when he’d reached for her because he thought he could save her.

He never thought he’d be the one to abandon her and _break_ her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I definitely should not edit/revise/cut/reread while half-asleep and emotional. It ends in tears and not always because I hate grammar and word counts.


	32. In the Shadow of the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for the kudos, comments and reviews! After driving home in a blizzard and shoveling, it was very much appreciated. A special thanks to nannyogg/mykelara for suffering through this chapter many, many times and listening to me vent and ramble, when I was ready to pull my hair out. And thank you to pgilmour75 for also taking the time to read through this and give me feedback as well! I owe you guys!
> 
> Dear SEA, I wrote this because I wanted to make it _stop_. Pages and pages of words aren’t going to make that pain and that grief go away, but it was the only way I knew how to hang onto you and to try to let you go.

Ellie calmed like a storm. At the end of it, she lay still against his chest. His coat was damp, but the coarse material had held up against the onslaught of tears and one more storm that they’d weathered together. She’d cried into that coat during that first storm, on a bench on the outside of everything and everyone she loved. She’d stolen that coat, slept in that coat and woke him from a nightmare wearing that coat. He’d given her that coat when he’d found her on that same bench the night he’d agreed to get the damn pacemaker, and he’d removed that coat and spread it out on the sand when he snogged her on the beach. Every time she’d tugged at the lapels, to straighten them, to make sure he was warm enough, or to drag him closer, she’d tugged at his heart. She'd snagged him like the thorn bush had snagged his sleeve earlier, surprising him, paining him and yanking her towards him. It _hurt_ but he'd found a perfect flower there in the midst of all those painful thorns. And then he'd drawn that flower out of his coat and released it, laying it down on the grave of everything that had brought them together.

This was the end of something that they’d never even named. He could see it in her eyes as she sat up and looked at him. She tried to sweep the tears from his coat and he tried to sweep them from her cheeks with his thumbs. It was futile, but that didn’t stop them from trying. 

“If you were planning on leaving me, why’d you even bother to come back?” she wondered, flattening her palms against the front of his coat. 

“I wanted to say goodbye,” he told her. Framing her face between his hands, he framed her face in his mind: a last mental photograph to be tucked away and revisited over and over again. “I gave myself ‘til Monday.”

“Five days? That’s it?” Ellie jerked backwards and his hands fell from her. “I suppose on Sunday you were going to say: Oh, and by the way, I’m dying. Have a fantastic life-”

“Ellie, don’t,” Alec pleaded with her, reaching for her sleeve. “Please, don’t.” Ellie flinched and he gave up. 

“You found out yesterday?” Alec didn’t answer her because she already knew. “And yet you – you took me upstairs and you-” She broke off, reddening, and Alec felt the blood rush into his face. “Is that all you came back for? Were you hoping for a shag tonight?” she sneered. 

“Yeah, that’s why I’ve been hanging around for the last _nine_ months because all I wanted to do was fuck you,” he lashed out at her with sarcasm and bitterness. “Jesus, Miller, do you really think that little of me?” 

They glared at each other and then Ellie wavered. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted, folding her arms and lowering her eyes. Alec’s chest tightened as she rubbed at her forehead. “I’m having a hard time dealing with all of this,” she admitted, sighing. “We’ve always told each other the truth and now…” 

Alec struggled to think of an explanation for his behavior and make her understand, but he couldn’t. 

“All I wanted was to make you happy and to take care of you and-” He sighed, because they both knew that he had obviously enjoyed pushing her to that brink as much as she had, and there was no way around it. He tacked on yet another breach of _trust_ to his lengthening shit list. “Fuck, Ellie, I’m sorry.” 

“We didn’t fuck,” Ellie reminded him with a trace of cheek. Their eyes met and Alec thought he saw a glimmer of hope in the heat of her gaze, when she told him, “And I know you’re not sorry because you did make me very, very _happy_.” 

“For twenty seconds,” he snorted.

Ellie laid her warm hand on his thigh. 

“I wasn’t just referring to that,” she clarified and her facial features softened along with her eyes. He took the opportunity to memorize her again, so that he could always remember the way she’d looked in the moonlight. 

“You were right.” She let go of his thigh to brush his bangs out of his eyes. “You can never really know someone or what’s going on in their head or their heart, and you can’t always trust.” Alec swallowed hard as she threw his own words back at him. Resting her palm against his cheek, she tilted his head closer to her. 

“I may not know everything about you Alec, but I know that even if your heart’s damaged, it’s still in the right place,” she said and splayed her hand over that broken organ. “And I know that even if your stupid head’s damaged too, you are _trying_ to do what _you_ think is the right thing.” Her eyes searched his. She ran her fingers through his hair and Alec closed his eyes. 

“But you still lied to me and you’re leaving us like you left your daughter.”

“Because I lov-” Alec’s eyes snapped open as his head caught up with his mouth and he actually processed what Ellie was saying. “Leave her out of this,” he growled and straightened up. 

“Fine.” Ellie dropped her hands and shook her head. 

“It’s not the same thing,” Alec insisted. 

“You gave me six hours to deal with _that_ bombshell and now you tell me that you’re taking off in three days with no intention of seeing me or my boys ever again. You’re a fucking arsehole,” she cursed him. 

“Well, at least I made it easier,” he spat. 

“ _Easier_? You think that it’s going to be _easy_ for Fred and Tom and me to accept that you’re-” She stopped before she could actually form the word, but it sat between them like that annoying person that always tried to squeeze in next to you on a crowded bus or the tube. 

“Look,” Alec paused to take a breath and tried to sound detached and rational, “If we do it now, you can tell them we broke up, or whatever, and that I left because I’m a knob and you never wanted to see me again. They won’t ever have to know that I-”

“God, help me, Alec,” Ellie said between clenched teeth. “I’m going to bash your head into one of those headstones if you don’t shut up.”

“Miller, your son thinks I’m his _Dad_ , and Tom already lost his best mate _and_ his father-”

“And whose fault was that?” Ellie asked snidely. 

“What was I supposed to do?” Alec retorted. 

“You were _not_ supposed to leave them.” Her voice was breaking. “And you were _not_ supposed to _die_ on me. That wasn’t supposed to happen!”

“ _You_ weren’t supposed to happen!” he snarled at her and her eyes widened. “I didn’t have anyone left to live for and I was ready to die, and then those two boys and _you_ – you maddening, irritating, annoying, irksome, brilliant, beautiful, stubborn woman – you were _not_ supposed to happen. Not to me.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. She was mute beside him and Alec focused on the brightest star in that dark never-ending sky. 

“Ellie, I never thought that I could care for anyone again, not like _this_.” He glanced over at her and found her eyes. A tear trekked down her cheek and her bottom lip wobbled. 

“I never thought that I could trust anyone again, but I did,” she said. Alec hesitated and then shifted closer, uncrossing his arms so that he could wipe that last tear away. 

“I’m sorry you trusted the wrong person, but you’ll meet someone else,” he assured her. “Someone you can trust, someone that’s going to take care of all three of you, someone that’s not going to leave them or you.”

“I don’t _want_ to meet someone else,” Ellie whispered, sniffling. “I wanted _you_. I wanted to trust you. I wanted you to stay with us; that’s all I wanted.”

He couldn’t tell her how much he wanted that too and he couldn’t tell her how sorry he was that he couldn’t stay with her. He’d never been any good with words and the damage was done. Words weren’t going to fix anything. It was too late. 

“You’re staying ‘til Monday?” she asked, blinking back tears. His belongings were still at her house. It had been his excuse to talk to her. He should’ve known he’d only make things worse and harder on both of them. Digging out his phone, he hung his head. 

“I’ll call for a car. You can leave my things outside. You won’t even have to see me.” Ellie rustled beside him. Her shoulder leaned into his and her hand found his sleeve, snagging it again.

“I need some space Alec, but I’m not kicking you out. I’m not that cruel,” she said. His thumb hovered over the car service he knew he should call, but he was brought back to that first night when she’d let him stay with her during the storm.

“You can sleep on the sofa,” she offered generously. Alec’s heart sunk. It was stupid, but for them sleeping in the same bed had been as easy as breathing, until he’d gone ahead and ruined that too. 

The screen went black in his hand but he kept staring at it. He’d planned on giving himself three more days but everything had changed and no matter what he did or said, he couldn’t get those three days back or resume where they’d left off. His heart skipped another beat in his chest as he forced those three words out. 

“I’m leaving tonight.”

Ellie made a strangled sound beside him, but it wasn’t a sob. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her hands fisting and flexing, and he knew he was about three seconds away from getting another slap or his head ironically bashed into a _head_ stone. 

“You can’t give me two bloody seconds to swallow all of this?!” 

“Miller,” he sighed, wearily. “Whether I leave now or I leave Monday, it doesn’t matter-”

“It matters to _me_. All I’m asking for is a little more time-”

“I haven’t got any time,” Alec interrupted her harshly. 

“You said Monday, you _told_ Tom Monday-”

“Yeah, well, maybe I lied about that too,” he sniped at her. “Or maybe I changed my mind because I can’t do _this_.” He motioned between them, referring to their fighting, and their latest attempt to release all of that pent up anger, frustration and desperation that was killing him and wearing her down. 

“You fucking-” Ellie faltered as soon as Alec looked at her. Their gazes locked and Alec knew that it was a mistake. He could lie to her with words but not with his eyes. She was so determined that he couldn’t have stopped her even if he had tried. 

When she kissed him, he was powerless. He let go of his phone along with everything else. The mobile fell down the stone steps and Alec fell into her. Ellie grabbed him by the lapels of his coat, dragging him close and seeking an intimacy that Alec was afraid they’d lost. Alec banged his elbow into the edge of the step behind him as he snaked his arms around her. Ellie’s fingers sought his collar, found the nape of his neck, and tugged at his hair. Alec groaned. Ellie gave him an opportunity to catch his breath and kissed the sensitive spot behind his earlobe.

“Ellie, don’t,” he growled, gasping, “Don’t even try.” He was defenseless and she wasn’t ready to say goodbye. 

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” she asked, freezing. Alec should’ve told her that she was, but he was already too far gone. He shook his head, although his whole body was aching, and he wasn’t in any shape to separate physical pain from the insatiable need that she was trying to provoke. 

“Are you sure because I can st-”

Alec stopped her mouth before she finished the word “stop”. Ellie took over after that. She knew exactly which buttons to push and he couldn’t tell if she was enjoying it or viciously trying to destroy him. It didn’t matter. When she pulled away and told him that he wasn’t leaving tonight, Alec was too breathless and dazed to argue with her.

“You’re bleeding again,” she pointed out, touching the corner of his mouth. He winced. 

Alec swiped his hand over his mouth. He couldn’t see any blood but he thought there was a hint of copper on his tongue. At the moment, though, focusing on anything was a task. He shut his eyes and coughed into his arm. Ellie gently stroked his hair and Alec remembered to breathe.

“Are you alright?”

“Are you?” he asked, opening his eyes.

Ellie gingerly traced the bump on the side of his head and Alec lifted his hand to cover the mark on her neck. They leant into each other until Alec’s forehead met hers. Their eyes closed and their free hands were entwined. Every breath, every heartbeat, brought them closer together and further apart.

“You need to go,” Alec whispered. 

“I’m not leaving without you,” Ellie argued, “Half of me still wants to twist your balls off for lying to me about everything-” He snorted and drew away from her. Ellie held his hand tightly, the last link left between them. “But the other half of me is going to _hate_ you if you think for one second that I am letting you go now.”

Alec looked down at their hands for a long moment. In the moonlight, her skin had the same ghostly hue as if she too had one foot in the world of the living and the other in the world of the dying. He’d mapped out her veins, lined his palm and fingers up with hers, and soothed the fresh scar that her wedding ring had left behind. Right when he’d gotten used to the idea of holding her hand, he had to relearn how to let go. His fingers were suddenly cold and stiff in her warmer, softer fingers. When she stood up, he almost came with her, but his hand slipped through hers like water. Ellie frowned at her empty hand and then at him. 

“Go home, Miller,” Alec said and turned his eyes homeward.

Ellie repeated a nasty word that he’d called Lucy earlier and stomped down the steps. He thought she’d gone, when she came back and threw something at him. His heart jolted in his chest, but he reflexively caught the object before it shattered against the limestone beside him. It was his mobile. 

“I am not finished with you yet,” Ellie warned him, “But If you want to leave tonight that’s fine, because I _really_ don’t like you right now.”

Alec’s heart sank and he was vaguely aware that it was more than an emotional reaction. His heart had been thrown by that hit and everything was catching up to him. He shut his eyes, trying to calm himself. When he opened them again, Ellie was crouched in front of him and she was putting the two pills that had been lost among the steps into his palm. She closed his fingers around them with her own and looked him in the eye.

“I’m _not_ saying goodbye.”

Alec watched her leave, wanting to follow her, but knowing that he couldn’t. 

*

Once again, Alec lost track of the time, but not because he was with Ellie. Now it was because he was without her. He didn’t know how he was going to get that maddening woman out of his head, but at some point he’d have to do it or he’d go mad. Gradually, he became aware that he wasn’t alone in the cemetery anymore. 

The footsteps paused on the step below him and Alec felt the weight of that gaze on him like the storm cloud that was closing in on him; threatening to drag him down into the earth that was less than fifty feet away. Alec drew in a deep shuddering breath and opened his eyes, already suspecting who he would find there: an instrument of death. 

"DI Hardy." 

Alec glared at Paul Coates and snarled at him. 

"Go away."

Paul Coates wasn’t intimidated by Alec, never had been, and perhaps that was one of the reasons why Alec disliked him so much. He sat on the step above Alec, a safe distance away from him. Alec tried to muster the strength to get up and leave the church, the cemetery and the irksome vicar behind. But Ellie had taken the last of his adrenaline with her, as well as a good portion of his oxygen supply and his _heart_. Alec didn’t even have the energy to breathe, let alone bark at the vicar to sod off. Paul stayed with him in the shadows, halfway between a church and a cemetery, halfway between life and death. Alec had felt like he’d entered a kind of purgatory the moment he’d stepped foot into Broadchurch. The irony was that as soon as he’d stopped seeing it that way, he’d literally started to slide into a place somewhere between life and death. And he was still slipping and sliding, slowly but steadily, into that dark place that waited for him less than fifty feet away and six feet under. Alec shut out the lines of stones that glittered coldly in the moonlight. 

“Are you planning on sleeping out here?”

“Would you rather I join the rest of the sleeping flock?” he deadpanned, opening his eyes to gaze out at the slumbering masses, hidden beneath stones, flowers and keepsakes that couldn’t disguise the fact that that person was forever _gone_. And soon he would be too. 

“You can sleep in the rectory,” Paul offered. Alec snorted. “And the Church is _always_ open to anyone-”

“Seriously?” Alec scoffed. “This whole stupid town doesn’t know when to shut their stupid mouths. I sit down on a bloody staircase for two seconds and suddenly someone’s trying to evangelize me-” He stopped to cough and by the time he had his breath back, he didn’t care about what point he was trying to make. The last two days had beaten him down and drained him, and he was crashing in the aftermath. 

“Are you ill?” Paul inquired.

“What do you think?” Alec spat and turned to find Paul closer than he had been before. He quickly twisted around, wiping his hand over his mouth, but he wasn’t fast enough. Although he disliked him and his profession, the vicar was not a stupid man. 

“You better come inside,” Paul said and reached for his arm. 

“Don’t touch me!” Alec growled. Paul recoiled and sat back, but he didn’t move away and he didn’t stop staring. Alec crossed his arms over his chest and tried to convince both of them that he was fine now. Fortunately, he was breathing regularly by the time Paul spoke.

“How’s Ellie doing?” Paul asked and Alec’s temper flared up again. 

“For god’s sake, why can’t you people just leave her alone!” He scowled at Paul who was still unnervingly calm. But he couldn’t muster enough energy to defend Ellie or release his wrath on that stupid town, because the wound was too fresh. He’d lost her and he could blame no one but himself. 

“I was only asking because I haven’t seen her or her boys around much since she pulled Tom out of school last winter. Is she alright?” Paul wondered and Alec was reminded that Broadchurch was a small town. He glanced over his shoulder at Paul, recalling how easily the conversation had flowed between that man and Ellie, and how despite Alec’s suspicions, Paul had shown some genuine concern for Tom in the past. 

“I don’t know,” Alec sighed. He wanted to think that she would be alright. That she could move out of this small town and shake off the memories of Joe and him like one shook the dust off their feet. But Broadchurch would always be a part of Ellie and those boys, as well as Joe, and as much as Alec tried to persuade her and himself, he had left a permanent mark on them too. 

“She got a new job and bought a house. They’ll move by the end of the month,” Alec told Paul. “I think she’ll be alright even after what this stupid town did to her, and what Joe did to her, and what I did to her-” He bit down on his tongue, but he’d already said too much, and the physical pain was a reminder. Rubbing at the corner of his mouth and his cheek, he imagined that her hand had left behind a burning handprint when she slapped him. 

“I’m sure she’ll forgive you,” Paul said. Alec shook his head. 

“It won’t matter,” he said and looked out over the rows and rows of tombs and the scattered clusters of stones in the distance. “We only forgive people for dying _after_ they’re dead.” The words sank in slowly like water seeped into the ground. It sat at the bottom of Alec’s roiling stomach. 

“I take it you’re not feeling well,” Paul said with a hint of sarcasm. Alec snorted again.

“No, not really,” he admitted. 

“You must’ve found out recently because last weekend I saw you two, and you were – um - _laughing_ ,” Paul blurted out, trying to cover his blunder up, but only digging himself in deeper. Alec immediately knew what he was referring to because Paul was blushing. He thought he’d be angry that once again someone else was poking their head into his personal business and Ellie’s, but all he felt was tired and sad that what Paul had witnessed was over. 

“I found out yesterday,” Alec confessed. It was hard to believe that not even forty-eight hours had passed since he’d sunk into that fog and begged for five more days. He barely got two. “I’ve been sick for a while, but yesterday they gave me six months and told me to get my affairs in order.” Alec still couldn’t wrap his head around it, even though he probably had two and a half years to come to terms with an illness that they told him would kill him if he wasn’t careful. And he hadn’t been _careful_.

“I just told her.” 

“It didn’t go well…” Paul didn’t need to ask. 

“She kicked me out and almost killed me,” Alec informed him. Paul’s eyebrows lifted. 

“That seems a bit _extreme_.”

“I deserved worse, threatening to die on her was nothing compared to the other lies I told her,” Alec went on, surprising both him and Paul. “I’m sure by tomorrow morning you’ll hear the whole bleeding story from someone, because this town’s got nothing better to do but gossip about Ellie and I.”

“Nah, you’re old news,” Paul assured him. “You should hear some of the things that went on last weekend at the bonfire. I even got an earful in the confessional. They’ll be talking about that for weeks.”

Alec remembered that Tom had gotten his first kiss at the bonfire, and then he vividly recalled snogging Ellie in the sand beyond the bonfire. The memory made his chest tighten up all over again. He inhaled deeply and thought that maybe he could still smell the smoke that had been in the air that night on the beach, mingling with her echoing laughter. 

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Paul asked again with an irritating amount of worry. 

“Just because they told me to get my affairs in order, doesn’t mean I’m going to die right _now_ ,” Alec grouched. 

Paul rested his hand on Alec’s shoulder and he tensed up. 

“I didn’t mean physically,” Paul clarified. Alec roughly shrugged him off.

“If you’re talking about whether I’ve made my peace with God-” Alec clammed up, remembering how he’d begged for five days. What he’d gotten instead was barely two days and a goodbye that hadn’t exactly gone as planned. 

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be God,” Paul said cryptically. Alec frowned at him and Paul hesitantly leaned forward and closer to him. “You’re restless,” he observed, his eyes scanning Alec’s face. “You may have accepted that you’re terminally ill, but I don’t think you’ve made your peace with anyone, including yourself.” Hesitantly, he touched Alec’s shoulder again. 

“I don’t know what you’ve done, but you have to forgive yourself. You’re never going to be at peace until that happens.” 

Ellie had told him to forgive himself too and Alec had reminded her that no one had ever forgiven him. But Chloe and Mark had forgiven Ellie and she was ready to forgive herself. He’d thought that he’d done his penance for Sandbrook, but now he realized that he was far from finished. Letting Ellie, Tom and Fred go, just as he’d let his daughter go, that would be the last stage of his penance. He could see the long drawn-out death that he didn’t want, because all those toxins he’d unleashed on them would finally break down his ailing body one cell at a time. 

“Six months isn’t enough time for me to make up for all the hell I put them through.”

“Then maybe you have longer than that…” Paul suggested with a raised brow. Alec stared at him incredulously, but it wasn’t worth fighting with a man that ignored almost every law of science in favor of a myth. And yet, sometimes Alec wondered…

“Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“I don’t have a home,” Alec realized. Paul looked at him with pity in his eyes and Alec was so bloody tired that he no longer cared. “My stuff’s at Ellie’s,” he told him, rubbing his heavy eyelids. 

“I can get your things and then take you to the Traders. There’s probably a room available.”

Alec shook his head, but if he called for a car it would be another hour or so before he could get his things and find somewhere farther away to sleep. 

“Look, I’ve got a nine o’clock funeral in the morning and they’re not going to want to see another body passed out on the front steps,” Paul told him and gave him an ultimatum. “So, either you come into the rectory or the church, or I get your things and take you to the Traders.”

Alec glowered at the vicar, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this _exhausted_. The fact that he was _dying_ was settling into every bone and muscle in his body and paralyzing him. He couldn’t make a decision fast enough, so Paul made it for him. 

“I’ll bring you to Ellie’s and then drop you at the Traders.”

Alec nodded. Paul stood up and Alec ignored his proffered hand. Slowly, he got to his feet and battled the overwhelming vertigo and the spike of pain in his chest. Paul steadied him before he could tip over the edge and join the quiet dead, a few steps down from him. 

“Don’t keel over on me,” Paul warned him, threatening, “Or you’ll be stuck in Broadchurch for eternity and I will give a terrible eulogy.” Alec rolled his eyes and halted, hoping that the church would stop whirling in front of him.

“You won’t have much to write,” he said, snorting and struggling to focus on anything other than the nausea that accompanied the scary new world swirling around him. “Nothing in comparison to the ninety-something-year-old you’ll have to eulogize tomorrow morning.” 

“I don’t know how old she was,” Paul admitted, his hand tightening on Alec’s shoulder, hard enough to ground him. “She was still-born.”

Alec felt the stone steps again, rock solid beneath his feet. When he opened his eyes, the church had stopped moving and the world looked the same again. 

“Is it your first?” he asked and took a step.

“Unfortunately, no,” Paul replied. Alec took another step. 

“It never gets easier,” Alec agreed, because although it wasn’t the same thing, Alec suddenly thought of Danny and those two laughing girls on bicycles. For the first time he felt as if they had some sort of common ground between them. 

Paul shook his head and gazed up at the church he’d pledged himself to that still couldn’t provide all the answers. Alec managed the rest of his steps on his own but with the vicar beside him. 

*

He called Tom and told him to put his stuff outside. Tom didn’t have to do anything, because Ellie had already packed everything up. Alec had to explain again that it wasn’t in any way Tom’s fault. He hated himself even more for not listening to Lucy weeks ago, when she told him he was too _close_ and that he had more than just Ellie to think about. 

“Do you want to go in?” Paul asked him as he said goodbye to Tom one more time. Alec sniffed and massaged his throbbing temple, wishing he could relieve the pressure and the ache that had stemmed from a _fall_. 

“No.” 

Paul grabbed his few belongings and loaded them into boot of the car. By the time they got to the Traders and had emptied the boot, Alec had pulled himself together. He looked at the vicar beside him, and thought of the funeral that Paul had to do and the words of comfort that he’d try to find, but that would never be enough. 

“Thanks.” He hesitated and then awkwardly held out his hand to Paul. The vicar shook his hand.

“Take care,” Paul said as Alec turned and reached for his carryall. “And Hardy?” 

Alec paused and looked back at the vicar who had been kind enough to try and take him to a home he didn’t have anymore. 

“I think you’re wrong.”

Paul got into his car and drove away and Alec watched him go, too tired to remember what he might’ve been referencing. 

Alec thanked god that Becca wasn’t around. The teenage boy at the front desk didn’t recognize Alec and he was able to pay in cash. The boy asked for his name and Alec was surprised by how quickly and easily the syllables rolled off his tongue. 

“ _Richardson_.” 

The boy asked him to spell it and Alec almost laughed. 

He got to the room, tossed his stuff on the floor and looked around. 

They’d put him in the same exact room as the last time. 

He saw Ellie and himself, on that same chair and that same bed, struggling to make sense of the horror of what Joe had done. He’d touched her arm again as she’d left, another feeble attempt to comfort her and fill the void that she’d hoped the answers he hadn’t been able to give her would’ve filled. A few days later, he’d reached for her on that bloody bench and that was the beginning of _this_ … 

He should’ve known then that it would end with an empty room and a ghost of a woman he’d loved so much that he’d destroyed her. He’d been a dead man, right from the start, but he’d tried so fucking hard to give her _everything_ he had left. It hadn’t been enough and he’d only made it worse.

Alec almost laughed at the irony of it all, but he couldn’t. 

He stumbled forward, nearly missed the bed, and blacked out.

*

The hours passed slowly. Alec spent most of them sleeping, or staring blankly at a television on mute, or watching a phone that wouldn’t ring. He called his daughter and then he called his ex-wife. Vicky reluctantly agreed to a supervised visit between him and Keira. Keira had a doctor’s appointment on Monday morning and afterward Vicky promised they could all meet for an early lunch. Alec was going to tell them then. The thought of seeing his daughter made him anxious, but he was already preparing himself for the letdown. This wasn't the first time he'd attempted to arrange a visit with Keira only to have Vicky or Keira back out on him, due to some excuse. The more time that passed the more desperate Alec became, but he knew that he wanted to see his little girl again. Meeting that beautiful but angry young woman would shatter him, because he was as much of a stranger to her as she was to him, and she _hated_ him. He doubted that Keira's feelings about her lying, cheating father that had abandoned them had changed, and he predicted that the visit wouldn't end well, no matter how many times he tried to apologize. 

Friday night, he caved and texted Ellie that he was still at the Traders and he would be there ‘til Monday. He had nowhere else to go ‘til then and the Traders seemed as good a place as any other. He didn't expect her to talk to him or to come to see him; the wound and the betrayal were still fresh and festering. She'd heal, she'd move on and maybe she'd forgive him out of pity, but he wasn't asking her to and even if she came around, it would probably be after he was gone. It would be better that way and easier on both of them, or at least that was the lie Alec told himself. 

He frequently emptied his wallet and looked at the three photographs that defined all that he had left to live for. He tried to throw the picture of the happy Miller family away, but once again he couldn't let go. Tucking it away, he pored over the two girls he'd failed, and then finally the striking young woman that he'd probably never know. Saturday night, Alec put that photograph away too, and pulled up the old family pictures in his phone. Twelve-year-old Keira beamed up at him and something inside of Alec broke.

He circled the room, opening drawers and flipping through channels on the telly. It was when he was rummaging through the desk for the second time, that he found an envelope hidden between the pages of the King James Bible. The envelope contained a bill, addressed to a previous occupant, but an envelope had been included for this James Murray to post a check. Alec stared at it and then eyed the standard pad of paper and pen that every hotel room came equipped with including a bible.

Sitting down at the desk, he stared at the blank paper and over thirteen years of memories passed before his eyes. Some were so vivid he could almost imagine that he was with her and that she was present in the room, but that painful throbbing ache in his heart, in his head, and in his tired body, reminded him that these were only memories of happiness, and that it was unlikely he'd ever see her or experience anything like that again. He rested his elbows on the desk and dug his hands into his hair. The paper blurred in front of him and his eyes burned. Picking up the pen, he started writing and he made the pain _stop_. 

*

Alec woke on Sunday to another dark day. He'd have to leave Broadchurch in the morning. He should've left then and stayed somewhere closer to where Vicky had chosen to meet for lunch. He should've gone home to Iris. But Ellie had asked for Monday, and even though Alec's heart had grown heavier with each passing hour, he'd kept that one promise among that pack of lies he'd told her, even after it was obvious that three days wasn’t enough time for her to forgive him. He had a missed call from her, but when he rang her back, he got her voicemail. There were a lot of things he wanted to say, but the silence on the other end was too loud. He couldn't hear himself think and was only able to stammer a few words that were awkwardly said and sounded empty. 

"Ellie, I..." He cleared his throat. "I'm leaving in the morning. I'm going to try to see my daughter tomorrow and then go home. I – um-” he faltered and cleared his throat again. "I never wanted to hurt you and I hope you know that I-" The voicemail timed out on him or maybe he'd lost service altogether, since the Traders wasn't the most reliable spot for cell coverage. He stared at his phone and wondered if she'd heard any of that or if it mattered. 

His eyes settled on the envelope he'd left on the desk. He picked it up, weighing it in his hand. It was surprisingly light for something that contained almost all that was left of his damaged heart. Biting his lip, he wondered if he'd find the courage to give it to her. If he gave it to her, if she read it, maybe then she could forgive him. Blinking back tears, he knew he wouldn't find the courage that he so desperately needed right now. 

Housekeeping knocked on the door and walked right in on him. Alec felt naked standing there with that flimsy piece of paper in his hand that couldn't protect what was inside. 

"I can come back later," the wide-eyed housekeeper said. She clearly hadn't expected anyone to be there since Alec had paid in cash, given a fake name, and had only left the room once to get food in the three days he'd been there. He wondered if the woman recognized him, but he'd be gone by the morning, and any gossip his presence there might generate would pale in comparison to everything else Lucy was probably saying about him. 

"I'll-"

"It's fine," Alec told her. Picking up the closest thing to him, his overcoat, he stuffed the envelope inside. He was halfway to the door when he realized it would be too warm. He dropped it and hastily grabbed the lighter jacket. He swept his wallet and phone off the nightstand. Leaving the room and the Traders behind, he went out onto the cliffs and down to the beach for the last time.

*

Months later, Ellie had taken Alec's coat out of the closet. She hadn't been able to bring herself to give it to charity or return it to his family because it seemed strange to give it back now. It still smelled like him and carried the memories they'd shared over the last year. She'd put it on and realized that he’d left something in one of the inner pockets. Taking it off, she'd dug out a crinkled envelope. She'd dropped the coat as soon as she’d read who it was addressed to in that familiar handwriting she missed. 

" _Shit_."

Ellie had sat down on the bed and stared at it for over an hour before she’d broken the seal. And then she'd cried and stuffed it back inside, wishing she hadn't skimmed the first page. 

Ellie still regrets opening that letter. She had selfishly held onto it for weeks. And she still doesn't want to return it with the coat. She thought about mailing them, but she knows she'll never find the closure she needs until she hands it over herself. She tried so hard to pretend that one day he'd come back for it, but she knows that’s _impossible_ and that she can't delude herself anymore. 

She parks her car on the street and gazes up at the white house at the end of the drive. Closing her eyes, she tells herself she won't cry or put the key back in the ignition and drive away from it all. She grabs the coat and gets out of the car. Each step gets harder than the last and she holds it closer and closer to her heart. She stops at the door, unable to ring the doorbell. She wants to hold onto that part of him for as long as she possibly can.

But today, she'll have to let it go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please remember that you shouldn’t murder the author. She has an army of ghosts…


	33. Caught in the Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos, comments and feedback! Thanks to pjgilmour for once again taking the time to read through this. And you can thank nannyogg/mykelara for this chapter. Back in July, I was at the beach and got stuck inside because it was raining. She challenged me to write a random beach scene and this was the result. At that point I didn’t have a clear idea as to where I was going but when I wrote this, the pieces started falling into place. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> Dear SEA, I think of you every single time I see a sailboat on the ocean. Maybe you really are still there, somewhere beyond that horizon.

He returned to the cliffs for the last time. 

The journey was slow and laborious. Broken beer bottles and charred wood from the bonfire littered the beach and the last high tide had left more rocks in its wake. He almost stumbled over an abandoned beach chair half buried in the sand, and an expensive bottle of whiskey that had been sucked dry before it was tossed aside. The debris of last weekend’s festivities were left behind as he rounded the cliff and walked closer to the water. Sand pipers raced away from him and seagulls took to the air. He kicked a pebble into the water and was reminded of that afternoon in the parking lot under the same burgeoning grey sky, when he realized that Lucy was right, but he couldn’t walk away from Ellie. Not then. 

Picking up another pebble, he tried to skip it across the water like he’d taught his daughter years ago. The water was too rough and the pebble wasn’t smooth or flat enough. He tried again and Keira at six-years-old flashed through his mind, beaming up at him as she finally succeeded and they both watched the rock bounce twice over the surface of the pond before sinking into the murky depths. Alec closed his eyes and tried to hang onto the memory of Keira wrapping her skinny arms around him, and the shrill sound of her laughter when he suddenly scooped her up and playfully threatened to toss her into the shallow water too. The rock sank and the wave crashed hard on the shore at his feet. The illusion was shattered and Alec was back on that beach in Broadchurch _alone_. 

He didn’t know how he ended up in this miserable place. Vicky and DS Aaron Cooper transferred before their suspensions were up, but Alec had stayed behind to take the blame and watch the case fall apart around him. His CS had sat him down after it was clear that it was over, and Alec had stared at the hideous painting behind his desk of a weathered sailboat out on the ocean until he was handed the paperwork he’d have to fill out for his own transfer. Alec didn’t remember if there was a choice or not, but Broadchurch was far away and that was all that mattered. The days blurred together after that, and one day he finally blinked and found himself standing on the shore, staring at a sailboat out on the ocean. For the first time he seemed to come back from that painting he’d always hated that hung in his former boss’s office, and all the horror that had been in that file that he’d closed for the last time and handed over to someone else. He’d felt the cool air on his face and he’d tasted the salt in the air. And he’d felt that eerie sense that he’d been there before, and he’d hated it. He’d snapped out of the numbness, and three weeks later he’d wished he hadn’t, because suddenly he’d been faced with another child’s body and an irritating woman that got under his skin. 

_Ellie Miller_. Christ, he hadn’t been expecting someone like her. He’d taken her job and she was his polar opposite, but after a rough start they’d learned to work together. And then it had all come crashing down on him, as the killer had turned out to be her husband and Alec had been forced to break her in the interrogation room. He’d tried so hard to pick up the pieces, but how could he when he was a part of that storm that had wrecked her old life? He wasn’t stable and his irregular heartbeat was a constant reminder that he could never be there for her, not in the way that she needed and deserved. But somehow they’d managed to find some kind of comfort in each other’s arms, and in platitudes that carried with them words that couldn’t be said, but ultimately wouldn’t solve anything. And when he kissed her, he felt like coming home, and when he held her, he could almost pretend that everything would be alright. 

His heart fluttered in his chest, painfully reminding him that he wasn’t alright. And that was why he needed to leave Broadchurch now, before it was too late. 

It had started to sprinkle at some point as those grey clouds overhead finally cracked open. He looked up at the darkening sky and headed toward the looming cliffs and the path that would take him to the center of town. The wind picked up as he trudged slowly through the sand and navigated his way through the wreckage of one blissfully hot weekend. He tripped over a piece of driftwood but he caught himself. He had to shut out the rush of heated memories that had followed the last time he’d tripped, when Ellie had laughed and he’d pulled her down into the sand. He’d kissed her as fireworks had exploded in the distance, until they had faded along with everything else except her. He tucked those memories away, along with the treasured memory of his daughter, giggling in his ear before he spun her around and set her safely back down on the rocky shore of the pond. 

He kept going up the beach and left behind those memories, the nightmares, and his shattered dreams along with the ocean. He tried so hard to outrun Sandbrook, but it had caught up with him in the form of another case. Ellie had dragged it out of him bit by bit until Iris showed up in the middle of everything and Alec had finally given Ellie the truth. But Sandbrook had taken a piece of his heart and he could never get that back, no matter how far he went. It was catching up with him faster and faster as each incident left him more shaken and more alarmed than the last. Soon the day would come when his heart would beat faster and _faster_ until…

He stopped dead in his tracks. His heart skipped a beat, but kept going, because Ellie Miller was less than ten yards in front of him. 

Ellie didn’t see him at first but as the rain started coming down, she lifted her head to squint up at the sky and spotted him. She froze and Alec held his breath. Somewhere deep within the depths of those billowing clouds overhead, he heard the low rumble of the thunder. That was the only warning they got before the sky opened up and it poured. 

Alec closed the distance between them and grabbed her hand as he passed. He didn’t dare look at her as he made for the rickety wooden shelter that was up ahead. As they drew closer, Ellie’s warm hand slipped from his and she made a mad dash for it. Out of breath, Alec collapsed beside her. They sat stiffly on opposite ends of the bench until Alec started coughing and Ellie asked him if he was alright. Alec looked at her and the six inches that separated them that felt like miles and miles to him. 

“I’ll be alright,” he lied, and after a moment he asked, “What about you?”

Ellie gazed back at him. Water dripped down off her tangled curls and a tendril was plastered to her forehead, right between her eyes. It bothered him. Scooting closer, he stretched out his hand and pushed her wet hair out of her face. 

“What about me?” Ellie asked softly as Alec clumsily combed his fingers through corkscrews that were limp and heavy with the weight of the water. 

“Will you be alright?” he repeated, focused on the stray strands of hair stuck to her cheek and chin. His hands were cold and her skin still carried the sheen of rainwater. Her shiver went through both of them as he tucked those loose locks behind her ears. 

“I’d be better if you weren’t dying,” Ellie confessed and he dropped his hand to her shoulder. Their eyes met again. “But just because you’re dying, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to fucking break.” Alec shook his head, backing away. 

“I never said that-” 

“It was implied,” Ellie snapped. “You don’t think that I can handle seeing you go through that but you’re _wrong_. I am a hell of a lot stronger-”

“I know that better than anyone else,” Alec cut her off, his voice rising and resonating through that small shelter that they were trapped inside together. “You are one of the _strongest_ women that I have ever met and I _know_ you will be alright. I’ve _always_ known that you would be alright.” 

Breathing hard, he swallowed and turned away from her wide eyes. He stood up but he couldn’t go far. He was confined to a box with the reality of his oncoming death, and the idea that in twelve hours he’d leave Broadchurch and Ellie for what could be the last time. Her voice followed him as she joined him by the opening. 

“Why are you so hell bent on pushing me away-”

“Because _I_ can’t handle it!” he exploded, balling his hands into fists. Standing that close to the edge, the shelter couldn’t completely protect them from the wind and the cold mist that it carried with it. “This is my bloody decision,” he reminded her, taking a step closer to the woman that had nearly made the decision _for_ him. “It’s _my_ life, and it’s _my_ death, and it’s got _nothing_ to do with you.” 

Ellie stood there, shell-shocked. Alec watched the anger seeping in along with the dampness. He fueled it with a feigned coldness that he didn’t feel, especially now that he could see the spark in her eyes. 

“Miller, I’m done,” he told her, spreading his arms. “It’s over. I can’t stay and you can’t come with me. You have to move on,” he said bluntly. “I know I screwed up by giving us both false hope, but one day you’ll meet someone. I know you will. There’s something about you that makes it hard not to lo- _like_ you,” he stopped before he lost himself in her eyes and swallowed again, forcing himself to go on, “When that happens, Miller, you’re going to realize that whatever fucked up thing we have between us, it probably wouldn’t have lasted anyway, and that you shouldn’t have wasted your time caring about what happened to a _dying_ man.” 

Ellie’s anger built up like the storm building outside. She lifted her hand to smack him and Alec caught her wrist. The rain lashed against the roof and sides of the shelter and Ellie’s eyes blazed with the same tempest. Even now, when they were spitting mad and taking it out on each other, Alec found her passion distracting because it made her even more attractive. That fire in her brown eyes had the potential to raze him to the ground and he’d enjoy burning to death in it. Ellie’s eyes narrowed as if she knew what he was thinking. Alec wasn’t expecting the strength of her fury. She shoved him hard enough to slam him into the wall of the wooden shelter. 

“Are you trying to kill me?” he snarled at her, panting. Her wrist had slipped from his fingers and now hers were curled around _his_ wrist. She kept him pinned against that wall, but Alec was only vaguely aware of the rough splintering wood scratching at his coat. Her chest heaved against his. 

“I hate you!” she spat. “I _hate_ you!” 

Alec’s heart stuttered in his chest, but mercifully, _physically_ , it had already recovered. She threw herself at him and Alec caught her in his arms. She was shaking and he wasn’t in much better shape. His legs were threatening to give out on him. He stepped to the side and she came with him, latching onto him and forcing him to use the wooden wall as their support and his guide. They barely made it onto the bench, before he crumbled beneath their combined weight, dragging her down with him. She was almost strangling him, and Alec was certain that he was hurting her with the way he was crushing her against his chest. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he told her, kissing her head and tasting the rain. “Ellie, I’m sorry.” His voice broke with the apology and he had to whisper into her hair. “I didn’t mean it, Ellie, I didn’t mean that.”

“I know,” she croaked, nuzzling his neck. He felt the tickle of her breath and then the pressure of her lips as she worked her way up to his three day stubble. “I don’t hate you, Alec,” she told him between light kisses, “But sometimes you make me want to-”

She unwrapped her arms from around his neck, cupping his face firmly between her damp hands. Her kiss was bruising enough that he could feel her heartbreak, her anger, and her grief. He anchored her to him, clenching his hand in her drenched hair. His fingers wrung and squeezed the water out of her hair, but the rain still lingered. They broke for air and then she was clambering into his lap and pressing him backwards until he was against a wall, sanded smoother than the other one. It didn’t make it hurt any less. She tasted and felt like the storm that was battering the flimsy three-walled shelter that did little to keep out the force of nature. Despite the fact that they were half shivering in their soaked clothes, Alec could feel her transferring the fire he’d seen in her eyes to every fucking part of his body. He wasn’t going to be able to fight that blaze for much longer and Ellie could sense it too as they came dangerously close to losing control. When she finally let up, they stared at each other, breathing raggedly. 

“You’re sure I can’t change your mind?” Ellie asked.

“About what?” he wondered, dazed and disoriented. 

Ellie laughed and Alec caught up with her. 

“You’re unbelievable,” he told her, shaking his head and pushing her off of his lap. 

“Oh, I _know_ ,” she teased him, grinning and looking down. Alec burned with the embarrassment, right up to the tips of his ears, and she giggled. He pulled her into his side, hoping that by keeping his arm around her, he might be able to stop her from testing his weakening defenses again. A couple of minutes later, she playfully sneaked her hand inside of his coat. 

“Ellie,” he groaned, extracting himself from her. He put some space between them and folded his arms over his chest. Taking a deep breath, he turned to her. “It’s not going to change anything.” 

Ellie studied him, considering it as a challenge. She inched closer and Alec backed up into the other wall, cornered. 

“I have to leave tomorrow because I’m meeting Vicky and my daughter for lunch,” he explained. 

Ellie relaxed and her face softened into that look that was so familiar to him now. 

“You don’t sound very enthused,” she noted and the worry lines came out in her forehead and around her mouth. 

“It’s not the first time I’ve tried,” he confessed and they both sobered. 

“Oh, Alec,” Ellie whispered. “You’ll see her tomorrow.” Her words didn’t carry any more confidence than he felt, but she still made him hope that tomorrow might be brighter. This time when she came to him, he let her. His arm curved around her and she settled against his chest. They sat like that for a long time, listening to the rain. 

“When do you think it’s going to stop?” Ellie asked him as he wound another one of her wet ringlets around his finger. 

“I don’t think it’s going to,” Alec predicted. “Not anytime soon.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, but it wasn’t until Alec thought he saw a flickering line out over the ocean that Ellie tensed and his hand stilled in her hair.

“Where’s your car?” he asked her, eyeing the three walls warily. Suddenly, it seemed almost as much of a death trap as those bloody cliffs. 

“I walked,” Ellie informed him, sitting up to look at him. She lived at least two miles out, and there was no way that Alec was walking that far, or allowing her to walk that far when the air still crackled with electricity as if the thunder storm could arrive at any moment. Ten seconds later, a bolt of lightning split the never-ending sky, branching outwards as it danced across the water. The storm was probably several miles off, but judging by the racing clouds overhead, it was moving quickly.

He got up and Ellie shot to her feet beside him. She was in front of him before he could reach the opening. 

“You’re not leaving now, are you?” she asked. Her voice and her stance carried a threat and a reminder of how much stronger than him she was now, but also a heartbreaking vulnerability. He brushed his hand over her damp curls, like he had that day months ago outside of a coffee shop on a snowy afternoon. 

“No, not yet,” he reassured her and held his hand out beyond her. The rain was cold and sharp against his palm, but the wind wasn’t as bad as it had been earlier and the rain wasn’t pounding on the roof anymore. Hopefully. 

The next crash of thunder was accompanied by a blinding flash. Ellie hugged herself and shivered beside him. Alec glanced between her and the rain. He didn’t want to stay out here all night and he didn’t think Ellie did either. 

“Come on,” Ellie said. She seized his hand and dragged him into the storm. 

They left the shelter behind and struggled up the sandy incline that led to the heart of Broadchurch. Alec had longer legs than her, but the rain didn’t bother him as much, and he had to be careful to pace himself or risk dealing with his condition. Ellie scrambled to the top and ducked into the nearest store awning, forgetting that Alec couldn’t keep up with her anymore. He found her there a few minutes later, rubbing her hands together and blowing into them with her shoulders hunched. Ellie’s favorite fish and chips place was only a few doors down, and the warm light that spilled out onto the shining pavement almost seemed welcoming, even to a Scot who had never liked fish and chips. 

“You could’ve gone in there,” he pointed out when he got his breath back. 

“I was waiting for you,” she said and laced her icy fingers with his. He looked down at their hands and then up at her bright eyes. The rain drummed against the top of the awning and trickled down the dark store window at their backs. Alec started toward Ellie’s fish and chips place but she stopped him with a tug on his hand. 

“You don’t even like that place,” she reminded him. 

“You do,” he said and took another step, only to be pulled back again. 

“I’m not hungry, are you?” she asked him. The latest medication had diminished what little appetite he had left, but there was something in Ellie’s face and the way she was stroking her thumb over his that awoke a different kind of hunger. 

“The Traders isn’t far…” he began hesitantly. Another clash of thunder overhead drowned out whatever he was going to say. He cleared his throat and awkwardly asked, “Do you want to-” Ellie didn’t wait for him to finish. Darting across the street, she towed him along with her. He clutched her hand as they made their way through the downpour, bracing themselves with every bang that was followed by a streak of light. Ellie was walking so close to him that he thought he was going to trip over her. He let go of Ellie’s hand to wrap his arm around her in a feeble attempt to alleviate the chill and protect her from the rain. Moments later, they banged into the Traders. Any attempt to slip in unnoticed was lost as the wind and the rain came in with them and they almost gave the teenaged boy at the desk a heart attack. It would’ve been comical if it wasn’t for the fact that Ellie was about to become the talk of the whole stupid small town. 

“Sorry, Alan,” Ellie whispered to the boy, smiling. Alec rolled his eyes and dragged her off to his room before they ran into someone else she knew or worse Becca Fisher. He’d been extraordinarily lucky so far, and he wondered if this was Fate’s way of making up for the fact that he realized he was in love with Ellie in the same week that a doctor confirmed that he was dying. 

The key dropped from his fingers as his hands slackened. _Fuck_. He really was _in love_ with Ellie. 

Ellie bent down to scoop it up and elbowed him out of the way to open the door herself. She turned and grabbed a fistful of his coat, yanking him into the room and shutting the door. Letting go of him, she stepped into the room and rubbed her hands up her arms. 

“It’s so much warmer and drier in here,” she moaned and set the key down in the exact spot he’d placed it in the last hotel room he’d taken her back to. She was rambling and practically crackling with the same nervous energy that he’d felt in the wooden shelter. He’d blamed it on the storm but maybe it was radiating from her. “It’s been a while since I got caught in a storm like that one.” She unzipped her coat and tossed it onto one of the chairs, still chattering. And as she whirled to face him with her brown eyes aglow in her flushed face and that smile he recognized as his favorite, Alec walked right into the side table. 

“Are you okay?” Ellie asked, torn between concern and amusement. 

“Fine,” Alec grunted and unzipped his own coat. 

But he wasn’t fine. He shrugged out of the garment and had to walk by her to fold it over the same chair. It didn’t relieve any of the discomfort that came with the heat that she was generating just by being there. This was worse than the flimsy little shelter and Alec half wished that they had stayed out there, because they were locked inside a room together that was too small to contain everything that he felt for her, now that he realized he was in love with her. 

“Something to drink?” he offered awkwardly, remembering the last time he’d brought her back to a hotel room, a little over a week ago. 

“No.”

“Do you want to take a shower?” Alec asked, almost choking when he belatedly realized the innuendo he might’ve made. And yet a part of him was screaming for her to agree, like last Sunday morning when he’d teased her. “I meant that you can take a shower,” he clarified, continuing in a rush, “You’re cold and your clothes are wet.” He tried very hard not to stare at the evidence. “I could give you something to change into if you want to take a shower.” Silently cursing himself, he propped his hands on his hips and determinedly did not look at her. The sodden clothes were sticking to her, emphasizing every single curve of her body. She took longer to answer that question. 

“You can go first,” she said and he looked up to find her much, much closer. Or perhaps he hadn’t been so hyper aware of how close she was before. 

“No, you go,” he insisted chivalrously and quickly busied himself with finding something for her to change into. 

The thought of Ellie peeling off her wet clothes to put on his wasn’t helping him at all. He found the largest and warmest jumper he had and dumped it onto the bed. After a moment, he added a T-shirt and another long jumper, and was considering adding anything else that might cover any part of her that was exposed now by the soaked clothes suctioned to her body. It was very difficult for him not to remember how he’d spent Wednesday night familiarizing himself with her and _taking care_ of her. 

“Right, um,” he cleared his throat and tugged at his ear. She was still standing there and he couldn’t stop his eyes from raking over her. His eyes flicked past her as he crossed his arms over his chest and frantically searched for something, anything else to look at. “Not sure when the rain will stop, but you could stay here ‘til then, or I could call you a car, or you could-” He broke off as a horrific thought occurred to him. “Is someone with Fred and Tom?” Ellie bit down on her lip, but Alec knew she was suppressing a smile and that she had definitely gotten _closer_. 

“They’re with my sister and Ollie,” Ellie told him. “Lucy claims she’s going to miss them, but I think she’s lying because Fred broke a whole set of her dishes last weekend when she had them. God only knows what he’ll do this time. You should see what he did to the kitchen while you were gone-” She faltered but shook her head. “He managed to get up onto the counter this time, and he emptied out all the cabinets. Ripped open every box of pasta in there, the flour, and the sugar – he got into the _sugar_. The landlord’s going to murder us if he gets mice.” She had to stop to take a breath because she was talking so fast that her words were running together. Alec realized that he might not be the only one that was anxious and under the pressure of the tension between them. 

“Does your sister know that you’re here?” he blurted out. 

“No,” Ellie admitted sheepishly, rubbing her neck. “But she’s dropping them off in the morning.” 

“You could stay with me tonight.” The second the words were out of his mouth, he blushed and looked away from her again. Their eyes landed on the bed that suddenly seemed too small for two people but unavoidably large in that cramped room. He almost wanted to take his offer back, because now Ellie was staring at him. It was stupid, so stupid. They’d shared a bed plenty of times. The last time, he’d seen and explored every part of her; but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t keep himself in check, even with Ellie strongly hinting that she’d prefer that there weren’t so many barriers between them. There had been something _different_ about the way she’d snogged him in the shelter and he was well aware of the storm of electricity crackling in the room. But he had self-control and Ellie did too. They were adults, not two horny teenagers –

Ellie touched his arm and he jumped. He scratched at his chest. His heart faithfully kept beating, but he needed to remind himself exactly why he shouldn’t even think of doing _that_ and why they were even in this predicament in the first place. It was his last night with her and damn it, he knew it was selfish but he wanted all of her. The fact that he knew Ellie wanted that too and that she often forgot the reason why she shouldn’t expect that from him, made it worse for both of them. 

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asked him. He nodded and she reached up to undo the top button of his shirt and then the next. She was so close that Alec was uncomfortable. Or more specifically his trousers were uncomfortably tight. It took every ounce of his willpower for him to slide his hands up to her shoulders and gently move her back from him.

“Do you want me to stay?” she asked, hesitantly, but Alec knew her well enough to know that she was wounded that he was once again trying to push her away. She’d stopped unbuttoning his shirt.

“Of course, I do,” he said, holding her at arm’s length. 

“Then why are you being like that?” she huffed.

“Being like what?” he snapped and abruptly let go of her when she tried to move closer. 

“You’re doing it again!” she accused him, prodding his chest. “You’re acting like you’re nervous or something.”

“’m not _nervous_ ,” he shot back. 

“Come on, Alec, we always share the bed. If you’re that uncomfortable I’ll sleep on the floor or in the shower, but nothing’s changed.”

“ _Everything’s_ changed!” he snarled. “For fuck’s sake, Ellie this might be the last bloody time that I can ever-” He bit down on his tongue and dragged his hands down his face. There was so much that he still had left to say, but they were running out of time and he was reaching his _limit_.

“Alec,” she said his name as he let his hands fall from his face, to hang at his sides. “It’s only me,” she soothed him, touching his arm and searching his face. “We don’t have to do anything. We can talk-”

“I don’t want to talk,” Alec spat, because he knew what they would have to talk about. It was like they’d carried that billowing storm cloud in with them and it was suffocating. He couldn’t avoid it, even if they did try to talk about something, anything else. “I don’t want to talk about _it_ ,” he sighed. Ellie lifted her hand, stroking his cheek. 

“Alec, we don’t have to,” she whispered. Even the gentle touch of her fingers left his skin tingling, stoking a spark within him. All Alec wanted to do was forget about everything and lose himself in her. The four walls were closing in around him and he didn’t know how much more he could take. She stood on tip-toe, pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth, in the exact same spot where she’d slapped him three days ago. 

She rocked back on her heels and waited for him to respond, but Alec knew that if he touched her, he wouldn’t be able to stop. 

“Are you going to shower?” he asked her, shivering as she carded her fingers through his hair.

“You can.” She let go of him and retraced their muddy footprints on the carpet. Sitting down on the edge of the chair where they’d left their jackets, she unlaced her boots. Alec propped himself against the nightstand and took off his waterlogged shoes and socks, one at a time. 

“Are you sure?” he asked her, glancing up from his task. 

“Yeah, you go,” Ellie said and pulled her wet jumper up and over her head. Her curls went wild with the static and she was left in nothing but a tight-fitting camisole that mind as well have been see-through. Ellie looked up at him, where he stood on the other side of the room, frozen with an upside-down shoe between his hands, trickling water onto his bare feet and the carpet.

“What?” she asked, moving onto the camisole. The camisole got stuck, catching on something. Alec had dropped the shoe and was halfway across the room, before he was even conscious of moving. “Bloody earring-”

“Hold still,” Alec ordered and Ellie listened. His nimble long fingers didn’t let him down, and he was able to detach the earring and get the stupid thing over her head. Laying it over his coat, he reached for her other ear. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Stop moving,” he told her. He found the latch on her left earring and removed it as well. He set the glittering pair down on the side table where he’d seen her put them in another hotel room. It seemed like ages had passed since that morning when he’d snuck out before she woke up to get her coffee, but he was just as anxious now as he had been eight days ago. He undid her necklace and he had to reach around her to take it off. Ellie shivered as his sleeve chafed over her bare chest. Getting the necklace to lock again was a chore that his trembling fingers weren’t up for, because Ellie was struggling with the clasp of her bra now and it was distracting. 

“Do you need help?” he inquired. 

“Could you?” Ellie sighed, exasperated. Alec spun her around and attacked the small hooks. The fact that everything was wet and his fingers were cold and stiff and shaking was making it difficult. 

“Got it,” he said finally. Ellie expelled a breath that Alec felt shudder right down to the core of him as she turned and dragged the straps down her arms, exposing her breasts to him. 

“Stupid thing, it always gets stuck-” She stopped in mid-speech when she found Alec staring at her again. “ _What_?” she asked again, annoyed. “Oh, my god, Alec,” she snapped, tossing the bra aside and propping her hands on her hips. “It’s not like you haven’t seen it before,” she pointedly reminded him. 

“It wasn’t this bright.” The words spilled from his lips before he could stop them. But it was true, her bedroom had been dimly lit and she was now standing directly beneath the lamp. He could see every freckle, every birthmark, every stretch mark and every god damn blemish on the white curves of her sagging breasts and her scarred stomach, and she was _perfect_ in each and every one of those imperfections. Ellie folded her arms over her chest under the guise of a shiver, but Alec realized she’d mistaken him and thought he’d insulted her. She rolled her eyes and went for the bed where he’d left the jumper for her, but Alec seized her arm. 

“You’re beautiful,” he told her, holding her gaze. She blurred in front of him. He blinked, but he knew that it wasn’t a fucking irregularity in his heartbeat that was making his eyes water and burn. His eyes swept down, drinking her in and filing that picture of her in a box full of memories that only existed in his mind. Leaning in, he gave her a lingering kiss on the cheek. He left a hot tear there too, or maybe it was hers, Alec couldn’t tell anymore. Ellie inclined her head towards him, but Alec brushed past her to the loo, wiping furiously at his eyes. 

As soon as the door shut behind him, he pinched the bridge of his nose and started cursing under his breath. He propped his hand on his hip and tried to pace, but the bathroom was too small. Turning on the water, he crossed his arms over his chest and perched on the edge of the sink. 

It was going to be a long night if he didn’t get a handle on himself. 

Steam filled the room, fogging up the mirror behind him and threatening to seep into his mind. Alec welcomed it, relished it, and hoped to god that it might stop him from thinking of that maddening woman on the other side of the bloody door. It wasn’t working. 

He _wanted_ Ellie, but it was more than that, so much more. After tonight, he couldn’t be with her at all. He hadn’t even realized how _dependent_ he’d become on her presence, but he was already feeling that void opening up inside of him. A thousand images flashed through his head; a discussion in his office, a row in the nursery, a joke about a shower, a bed shared platonically, a moment outside of a coffee shop, a laugh in a restaurant celebrating a fake anniversary, a long look on a cliff, a kiss in a dark kitchen, a smile in a hotel room, a hand reaching out to take his, a shoulder to lean on, and an embrace so warm that it lingered long after she was gone. Alec had been so worried about the effect that it would have on Ellie and her boys that he hadn’t given much thought to how it would affect _him_. 

He’d fallen so hard for her and he hadn’t noticed until it was too late. Over the last eleven months, that irritating, stubborn, beautiful woman had become _everything_ to him. Now that he was letting go of the only thing that made him feel _alive_ even when he was _dying_ , he was so _afraid_. 

He was _dying_ and suddenly he didn’t know how he was going to be brave enough to do it without her.

Alec cupped a hand over his mouth and pushed off from the sink. He caught himself against the wall beside the shower and tried to hold it all inside. He couldn’t do it. Fully clothed, he staggered into the water. He came up hard against the slick tiles but they slowed his fall. His hands were steadily slipping and his legs were weakening beneath him. Curling in on himself, he slid slowly but inevitably down. The sound of the running water drowned out his ragged sobs. Pulling his knees up to his chest, he dug his hand into his wet hair and tried to stop his heart from breaking. 

And that was when the storm _broke_. 

He raged against the unfairness of it all with tears that were lost in the water raining down on him. The steady stream washed it all away. Everything swirled down into that drain by his bare feet and Alec let it all go. 

When Ellie walked in and found him, Alec was too far gone. He couldn’t stop crying and he couldn’t get up. And it had nothing to do with his heart _condition_. 

“Oh, my god! _Alec_!” 

Alec opened his eyes and looked at her through the cascading water and his swollen tearful eyes. He buried his face in his hands but she’d already seen everything. A moment later, his hand was pulled away from his eyes and he was exposed. Ellie had the unopened packet of pills and was struggling with it. Alec ripped it out of her hand and tore the whole thing open. He stuffed two pills in his mouth before the water could break them down, and fisted his other shaking hand around the cutting plastic edges. 

“Shit! I’m calling 999.”

Alec flung the fucking packet out of the shower. It ricocheted off the sink and skidded across the linoleum floor to her bare feet. Gasping, he glared at that clear sign of his weakness and mortality and all that time that was pouring out of him. 

“Oh, Alec,” Ellie whispered and reached through the water for him.

“’m fine!” he snarled. He flinched when her hand touched him. Wrapping his arms tighter around his knees, he thought that he could pull himself together if only he could keep himself from falling apart. 

“’m _fine_!” he hissed at her, but Ellie was already down on her knees and crawling through that wall of water that separated them. “I’m-” His voice broke over another lie she wouldn’t believe. 

Ellie hushed him and pulled him into an embrace that was warmer than the hot water and more comforting than a shower after a long grueling day. As she enfolded him in her arms, Alec started to come apart. He let go of his knees and lost his balance as he tried to wind his arm around her. Ellie was there to break his fall and Alec clawed at her, hanging on with everything that he had left in him. 

Slowly and unsteadily, she was able to pull them both back up into a sitting position against the wet, dripping tiles. The water pooled around them, soaking uncomfortably through their clothes and weighing them down. Again, Alec was _drowning_ and taking her with him, but as they curled around each other, shivering and shaking and crying, Alec pushed those thoughts aside along with everything else. He was still in the center of that storm that was battering him and threatening to tear him apart. But he held onto her and she didn’t let him go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I miss the beach. I mostly described the beach that I was at and not Broadchurch, although nannyogg/mykelara can attest to the fact that I “researched” the shelter that showed up in that scene in S1 with Alec’s doctor. Sort of. David Tennant was very distracting.


	34. The Tempest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A HUGE thank you to Nannyogg123/Mykelara for having the time and patience to help me with this troublesome chapter and RL. I can’t apologize enough for bugging the hell out of you and freaking out over EVERYTHING. Another big thank you to LilyDragon and pgilmour75 for reading this over and over again and trying to fix my stupid errors and forcing me to challenge myself to rewrite the whole damn thing. If it wasn’t for you three this chapter would’ve been A LOT WORSE or would’ve taken me another 2.5 years to post. THANK YOU SO MUCH! Thank you to everyone else who left comments and reviews!!!
> 
>  
> 
> **Spoilers for _possible_ NSFW/M Rating and feelings, lots of feelings**

The water gradually went from hot to freezing cold. She tried to shield him from everything, keeping him nestled against her breast and safe within the circle of her arms. But this was something that she couldn’t protect him from and she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be able to hold onto him. The thought made her shiver. She’d been so focused on the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing evened out that she hadn’t noticed the shifting temperature or the sudden plunge in the water pressure.

Ellie dropped a kiss to Alec’s crown, combing her fingers through his thick mop of hair. Beads of water formed at the ends, trickling down his neck. He twitched and then nuzzled her hand, cuddling closer. Ellie wanted to scoop him up and take him home with her, but even if she could carry him she knew that Alec would never let her.

“You need a haircut,” she murmured. Alec snorted into the front of the jumper he’d loaned her.

“Miller, I’m dying, I don’t need a bloody haircut,” he grumbled. Ellie released him as he separated himself from her, using her body to get up. “You won’t see me anyway,” he reminded her bitterly, sitting up against the tiled wall beside her. His words were colder than his drenched sweater that was now weighing her down. Ellie pulled her knees to her chest and gazed at her bare feet.

“Sorry,” he whispered, resting a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Ellie, I’m-” Their eyes met and he faltered. He could apologize a thousand times, but it wouldn’t make any difference.

“I’ll get a haircut,” he relented, squeezing her shoulder and brushing a chilling kiss over her temple. “I’ll do whatever you want,” he whispered and his voice was accompanied by the brief heat of his breath against her ear.

“You’ll stay?” she pleaded with him.

“Tonight,” he promised and this time his lips were warmer. He pulled away from her. They sat there for a minute, shivering in their sodden clothes, and listening to the rushing water and the gurgling drain. Alec stirred. Thrusting his fingers into his hair, he balanced his elbows on top of his knobby knees.

“ _Shit_ ,” he swore. Catching his chin in one hand, his other dropped limply between his long legs. She touched his arm and he looked at her. The words weren’t even on her lips when he groaned that he was _fine_. Leaning back against the discolored tiles, he squeezed his eyes shut.

“I don’t suppose you want to take a shower?” Ellie asked, watching the thinning water.

Alec cracked his eyes open to glare at her.

“No sex in the shower?” she teased him.

He barked a laugh and tipped his head to look up at the stream that had slowed to a sputtering drip. The rhythm was hypnotic. Suddenly, the showerhead gave up one last gasp, spraying them with a burst of ice cold water. They flinched and shuddered. It stopped completely after that.

“We just used up all the bloody water,” Alec sighed. He rolled his head and their gazes locked. “I’m glad I paid in cash and told them that I was Mr. Richardson.”

“ _Richardson_ ,” Ellie repeated her own name. Crinkles formed at the corners of Alec’s eyes and she recalled a sunny afternoon when a realtor mistook him for her husband, and he brought her to a restaurant to celebrate their fake anniversary on her birthday. “You are such a knob!” She swatted his arm.

“They even asked me how to bloody spell it,” Alec sniggered.

“Alec, if I get that fucking bill you’ll wish that you were already dead!”

Alec laughed. The sound echoed off of the walls and thawed some of the frost that the frigid water had coated them with. His shoulders shook with the force of that ringing laughter that Ellie hadn’t heard since the night he’d snogged her on the beach, or perhaps since the day they had been the Richardsons. It wasn’t even that funny, but they were both well beyond a breaking point and somewhere outside of the time that was being sucked into the drain by their bare feet. She clutched her sides and her eyes welled with tears of mirth instead of grief. And every time they glanced at each other, they’d start up again.

Alec began coughing and they finally settled down. He turned to her with a grin that deepened the laugh lines that Ellie never even knew were there. It reached his eyes for a split second, and Ellie caught another glimpse of a younger man with a daughter and a family who had loved him, and had made him happier than she ever could.

“God, I love you Richardson,” he said and the grin faded along with the specter of a man Ellie would never know. He’d said it again. Three small words that she’d heard every day from a husband who she’d thought she’d known, but who had left her for a boy he’d suffocated, because he’d allegedly needed more “love” than she could give him. Every time he’d told her, it had been a lie. And Alec had said them now in jest, referring to another lie they’d told themselves one day, when they’d wanted to pretend that the demons from their pasts and their painful present hadn’t existed. For one hour, they’d been two ordinary people enjoying themselves in a restaurant, and Ellie wanted to step back into that moment and relive it all over again. Clearly, Alec was desperately hanging onto that memory too, in an effort to fight the frightening idea of his inevitable death that was chillingly seeping into their clothes and beneath their skin, right down to the fragile skeleton that was barely stitching them together.

“Bloody realtor, can’t even remember her name, let alone why I married you,” he sniggered.

“I didn’t tell her we were married, _you_ did,” she insisted, “And we never even consummated the marriage.” She nudged him, bumping her shoulder into his and lifting her brows.

“I believe your exact words to me were: I’m not having sex with you,” he reminded her, snorting as they both recalled a walk along the cliffs to a cottage on the outskirts of town, where he’d proven all the rumors they’d denied and kissed her in the kitchen. “And then you made me sleep on the sofa and threatened to make me sleep in a shower.”

“I never _made_ you sleep on the sofa, that was your choice,” she protested and poked his arm. “And you never actually slept in the shower. Not even that first night. Instead you dragged me into _my_ bed with you.”

“I didn’t _drag_ you,” he argued. “You offered it to me first and I was planning on sleeping on the floor. I just-” He halted because the exact circumstances weren’t important anymore. Tilting his head, he found her eyes again. After a long pause, he spoke. “I never expected that we’d end up here.”

“Soaked to the bone and sitting at the bottom of a shower with the water off, no, definitely wasn’t expecting that,” Ellie quipped. Alec didn’t find it funny at all.

“Do you regret it?” he asked softly. Ellie frowned. “I mean…” He hesitated. “If we could go back to that bench, or that first night, or the kitchen, or the hotel, or…” he trailed off. There were so many points where they could have stopped, where they _should_ have stopped, that wouldn’t have led to this moment, or to the heartbreak that they were facing now. He picked at the old scar where she knew his wedding ring had been; a reminder of yet another _mistake_ that had brought them here. “Would you have changed anything?” he wondered.

Ellie stared at the broken, beaten down man before her that had filled her heart and her home, and was now threatening to walk out of it, leaving it emptier than it had been before. Over the last three days, she’d spent a lot of time finding new foul names for Alec Bloody Hardy. He’d shattered her trust. He’d endangered the lives of her children. He’d taken her son into a prison to see a monster. He’d lied to her. And now he was going to abandon her and her sons, just like that fucking bastard that had lied to her and broken her trust too. Alec had helped her heal and had helped her learn to heal herself, and he’d made her happy and her boys happy, but it didn’t make the fact that he was _leaving_ them hurt any less. She wanted to be there for him in the same way he’d been there for her. Instead of allowing that, he insisted on giving her less than three days to accept that he didn’t want her near him, and that he never wanted to see her again. He was _dying_. And yet, in spite of all that, there were a thousand memories that they had together that Ellie would never change.

She selfishly wanted more memories to treasure when he was gone, and that was why she had forgiven him so quickly. A storm couldn’t thwart her trek to the Traders where she had been hoping to talk him out of his absurd ultimatum. But seeing him now, she knew that she couldn’t. Tonight, he would break her heart that they’d spent so much time repairing. It was going to destroy them, but she wouldn’t change anything.

Ellie reached out and rested her hand against his cheek.

“No,” she said, caressing the cold skin that was paler now in stark contrast to his dripping dark mane. She slicked back his bangs, rubbing her thumb over the wrinkles forming in his brow. She couldn’t erase those lines or the evidence of how much he had aged in the past two years because of a broken heart. By the time he’d come in out of the rain and sought shelter in her arms, he’d been too far gone and beyond healing. Leaning in, she kissed his cool forehead.

“I don’t regret it. I don’t regret any of it,” she whispered as his large eyes gazed into hers. “Do you?” she wondered, trailing her fingers down his jaw and past his scruff to the protruding collar bone beneath it. Alec didn’t answer her. His mouth was half open and he was staring at her as if he wanted her to understand, but in this case there was a limit to Ellie’s understanding. She wasn’t the one dying or the one who wanted to push her away, so that he could die alone.

Alec got up unsteadily and she scrambled to her feet. He slipped on the tiled floor, but caught himself with whatever equilibrium he had left in a body that was already betraying him. Ellie should’ve been seeking out his weak spots so that she could prevent another fall, but instead she was struck by how the water had left him with one less layer to hide behind. It was obvious that his clothes didn’t fit him, but the cloth stuck to his skinny frame, revealing a man that eleven months ago she often forgot was a _man_ at all. But now she was very aware that he was a _man_ , and she was acutely aware of her attraction to him that impossibly grew with every touch and every kiss, and with every one that he withheld from her.

He took a bath towel off of the top shelf and put it on the counter in front of her. His eyes guiltily raked over her and the soaked wool that clung to her body.

“I have another jumper for you to change into,” he said, rubbing at the back of his head. “Unless you want something else?”

Ellie did want something else from him, but Alec couldn’t give that to her. She stripped off the burdensome heavy jumper in front of him anyway. Alec swallowed and made a valiant effort to keep his eyes on her face. He failed miserably and Ellie relished the blush that she could provoke. He knew it too. Throwing the towel at her, he stalked out. Somehow he managed to hit the doorjamb on the way out and to trip over his own feet. Ellie heard him cursing all the way to the bed and she giggled. The recollection that Alec was planning on _leaving_ her in the morning was more than enough to sober her as she dried herself off.

Alec returned with fresh clothes and Ellie accepted the jumper. It was thicker and cozier than the last one he’d given her, but it was snugger and only reached mid-thigh. The garment smelt more like him and Ellie wondered if he’d worn it recently. A silly idea occurred to her that perhaps she could steal it from him, or a T-shirt, or anything that still carried his scent. It would’ve been a stupid, immature thing to consider, but in this case, Ellie desperately wanted something of his to hold onto when she had nothing left of him.

“What’s the matter? Is it warm enough?” Alec asked, frowning. He’d hung the discarded sweater over the door but he hadn’t gotten to his own clothes yet.

“It’s fine,” she reassured him, hugging herself and the comfy clothes he’d given her.

“Your hair’s wet,” he pointed out, touching her limp curls.

“’course it is, we just got out of the shower.” She rolled her eyes and Alec tossed the towel over her head. Before she could rip it off, he got behind her and started toweling her hair dry.

Alec was gentle but thorough, and Ellie was struck again by another reminder that Alec had been the father of a little girl. It hurt to think of how good of a father he must’ve been to his daughter, and that despite how much he obviously loved her, she’d shut him out of her life.

He finished with her hair and wrapped the towel around her shoulders. For a moment he kept his palms there on the damp cloth. Then he dipped to brush his lips over her throat. Ellie felt the scratch of his three day stubble as he buried his nose in the crook of her neck. His hands slid to her hips, clinging to them through the bulky wool. They stayed like that until Alec shivered.

“Your hair’s wet,” Ellie quipped as the cold water dripped off of his mop of hair.

“’course it is, I just tried to drown you in the bloody shower,” he sighed and stepped back from her.

“You didn’t _drown_ me.” Ellie pulled the towel from her shoulders and spun around.

“Then what do you call that?” He stabbed a finger in the direction of the shower. The humiliation of breaking down on her had belatedly caught up with him, and his face was flushed and tinted by the embarrassment. He was on edge again and Ellie had to struggle to keep her own emotions in check.

“Sit,” she ordered. He blinked at her. Ellie took advantage of his moment of confusion to shove him down onto the closed lid of the toilet.

Before he could get past her name, she draped the towel over his head. And then she started drying his hair. Alec squirmed and Ellie scolded him, “God, you’re worse than my boys.” He scowled over his shoulder at her, but Ellie gave his hair a vigorous scrub, forcing him to sit still or risk her breaking his neck. It was easier to be gentle when he stopped moving. He was so rigid and stiff, and his jaw was clenched so tightly that he looked like he was in pain.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked worriedly.

“No.” Alec shut his eyes as Ellie replaced the towel with her fingertips. She scraped her nails lightly over his scalp and Alec made a sound in his throat that Ellie recognized. She’d heard it before, the morning after snogging on the beach, when they’d shyly approached the subject of shagging while Ellie ran her fingers through his hair. He opened his eyes and Ellie saw the same undeniable attraction. And the desire there was overwhelming. If Vicky had been his last, then it had been almost three years or longer since anyone had _taken care_ of him in the same manner that he had _taken care_ of her. She paused.

Alec snatched the cloth from her and stood. Ellie followed him as he rubbed at his neck with it, apparently too distracted to notice that he was still fully dressed in clothes that now left very little to Ellie’s imagination. She attacked his button-down and Alec jumped.

“I’m not a child, Miller,” he protested and leaned back against the sink with his arms stubbornly crossed over his half buttoned shirt.

“You’re acting like one,” Ellie retorted and continued the task that became a chore due to the storm that had driven him into the shower and the fact that Alec wasn’t cooperating.

“Miller,” he groaned and tried to bat her hand away, but Ellie was determined.

“Stop fighting me,” she snapped as she worked her way down to the last button and pushed it off of his shoulders. “You’ll get sick if you stay in these wet clothes,” she said, finally getting that first layer off of him.

“I’m already _sick_ ,” he reminded her. Ripping the shirt from her hands, he threw it at the shower behind her. She’d lit a fuse and Alec was suddenly on his feet with his temper ablaze. “Stop fussing,” he hissed.

“I’m not _fussing_ ,” she shot back.

“I’m not some bloody invalid!” he snarled, closing in on her.

“Then prove it and don’t fucking push me away!”

Ellie thought that it was his temper she’d sparked, but she was mistaken. Alec’s eyes were dark, almost black as coals with the dilation of his pupils and the light now behind him. His hands fisted at his sides and every muscle and tendon in his body seemed to be stretched thin. He was frustrated and his restraint was fraying like a tight rope she’d pulled too far. That rope was going to snap if Ellie tugged him any closer. She could sense it in the air around them; a wave of heat that arrived with a hot spell that would only break with a storm that they couldn’t hide from anymore and that they should’ve seen on the horizon weeks ago. When he moved, she thought he’d crush her like he had with that first uncontrollable kiss after he found out that he was dying. But he didn’t touch her. He left a fraction of an inch and an overpowering storm of pent-up sexual tension between them.

“What do you want Ellie?” he asked her softly, so softly that his voice felt like a caress.

Ellie didn’t know where to begin. He’d asked her that when they’d had a row about the pacemaker that he hadn’t ended up getting. He’d been so afraid and yet he’d tried for her.

“I want you to get a bloody haircut,” she said the first thing that came to mind, and then all the things she wanted from him rushed through her as something inside cracked, “I want you to come to bed with me every night and I want to wake up next to you every morning. I want to wear your old jumper, and your stupid coat and scarf. I want you to mind Fred and talk to Tom when I can’t. I want to know everything about you. I want-I want you to come home with me and I want you _stay_ with us and I w-want to take care of you even when you’re-you’re” Her voice quivered and she couldn’t finish. Alec reached out to her, cradling her face between his shaking hands. Ellie caught his wrists and she closed her fingers around his watch in one hand and his pulse in the other. She could hear and feel the time ticking away. She lost another second with every beat.

“I want to remember you,” she told him, pulling herself together. Her gaze was as steady as the heartbeat she had within her hand. “I don’t want to forget and I don’t want to waste another moment that I have left with you.”

“Ellie,” Alec whispered, ghosting his lips over hers. “Ellie.” He kissed her again. “ _Ellie_.” Her name carried all of the things that he wanted to give her. His voice held the apology that he couldn’t give her anything more than tonight. “Ellie, _please_.”

Ellie let go of his wrists to slide her arms around him. Her hand rose to the nape of his neck and her fingers tugged at his shaggy overgrown mane that he’d neglected along with so many other things, attending to her and her children instead. She yanked him toward her and into a hard kiss. He responded with every last breath of the energy he had left. She swore she could taste the bitterness of the pills he’d swallowed earlier but it didn’t deter her; it made her want him more. If tonight was going to be her last night with him than she was going to give him something to remember. Every last hour, every last minute and every last second of this night was _theirs_.

“Let me take care of you Alec,” she urged him when they stopped to breathe. His hands were attached to her hips, digging through a layer of fabric that was the only thing hindering his fingers from reaching her skin.

Tracing over the pulse in his throat, she trailed her lips lower. He had a freckle on his neck, on the same side, but a little higher than the blemish he’d left on her a few nights ago. She nipped at the skin and Alec shivered. He pressed her into the wall, wedging a knee between her legs and Ellie could _feel_ how much he wanted her against her hip. Biting down, she soothed the bruise with her tongue. She would leave a mark like the one he’d left on her, staking a claim on his heart that would remain long after the night was over.

He claimed her mouth and Ellie grasped his undershirt, pushing it higher and higher. She peeled it away from his chest, and he helped her get it over his head and out of the way. His self-control had been wrung out with the water, stretched well beyond every careful limit he’d set for them. With every scrape of his stubble and the resulting friction, it became harder and harder for Ellie to remember why there were limits that they’d never tested. She groped for his belt and undid it one-handed. It clattered to the floor. His hands skimmed up her thighs, and roamed her bare skin beneath the woolen jumper that was no longer comfortable and soft, but an itchy, hot, thick annoying wall between the two of them. Alec palmed every inch of her that he could, and his hands skated down her spine and then up to explore the curves of her breasts. When he reached the hem of the jumper and her soaked knickers, she tried to remove that irritating barrier without letting go of him.

“Wait,” Alec said breathlessly, “Ellie, _wait_.”

“For fuck’s sake, Alec, now’s not the time to be a gentleman,” Ellie panted. “ _Yes_ , I’m sure. Yes, I know what I want. Don’t stop.”

She wrapped her leg around his, expecting him to be able to hold her up like her husband of fourteen years. He couldn’t. He fell. Or he would’ve if she hadn’t been there to break his fall. He’d always seemed so much stronger when she’d needed him to be, that she was surprised by how easily she supported him for the few seconds it took him to find his footing again. He was weak and shaky, and his breathing was ragged against her neck.

“Slow down,” he whispered, “Ellie, you need to slow down.”

Ellie was suddenly aware of his heartbeat and she froze. It was too difficult to focus on his pulse when her own was thudding in her ears.

“Oh, god, Alec, I forgot,” she gasped. Her fingers frantically scrabbled for his throat and found the lively reminder that he wasn’t dead yet, far from it. Alec made it almost impossible to measure a heart rate because his lips were at her jaw and then on her own pulse.

“I want to forget,” he murmured, resting his forehead against hers. “But Ellie, you’re _killing_ me,” his voice trembled with every syllable. The firm reminder against her thigh made her suspect that this was more than his _condition_. “You need to _relax_ or I won’t last,” he warned her.

“We can stop,” she soothed him, stroking his hair. “Alec, we can wait.”

The second she said it, Alec looked at her with wide eyes that contained everything from lust to sadness. They’d already had this conversation in the kitchen, when he knew he was dying and that he was going to bring her son into a forbidden prison. Ellie understood now.

“Oh, Alec,” she breathed and framed his face between her hands. “It’s alright,” she reassured him as he shook his head, “We don’t have to do this. I’m not asking for anything. All I want is _you_. It doesn’t matter if we talk or-”

Alec shut her up with a kiss that reminded her of fireworks and laughter. They’d been _happy_ that night, and she didn’t understand how Alec could suddenly make her feel that memory. Ellie wanted to remember that and forget about everything else…

“I want to be with you,” Alec told her and his rough Scottish accent was like a melody that she would replay afterwards over and over again. He swallowed hard and searched her face. “Just give me tonight, Ellie, _please_.”

Ellie hesitated. His eyes were willing her to trust him and his instincts, even though she knew - they both knew - that they shouldn’t. He’d lost control of himself before, but now it was too late to stop.

She dropped her hands from his flushed cheeks and it was as if she had slapped him. If she hadn’t already made the decision to trust him, the wounded look on his unguarded face would’ve swayed her. Taking off the sweater, she held it against her bare chest. He’d given it to her to keep her warm, because he couldn’t get it through his thick skull that all she needed was his touch. They stared at one of the last layers between them until Ellie released it to rest her palm over his steadily beating heart. Tucking a finger beneath his chin, she brought his smoldering gaze level with hers.

“If your heart stops or so much as skips a fucking beat, I swear Alec I’ll-”

“It won’t,” Alec cut her off, kissing her so sweetly that she melted into him. “I’m right here,” he whispered into her curls as his fingers tiptoed up her rib cage. “Tell me what you want.”

“ _I want you_ ,” she told him again because he _needed_ to hear it. “But we can _relax_ …”

Alec chuckled against her collarbone and the vibration made her skin tingle. His nimble fingers and the dexterity of his careful hands as they rediscovered her breasts made her body _burn_. His mouth followed and Ellie moaned. Kindling and stoking the growing fire within her, he proved that he always paid attention to every little detail and that he was a fast learner. Alec was so awkward and shy that it was hard to believe that after one time, he knew exactly how to induce those sounds that she tried so hard to suppress, and that he knew how to touch her so that her whole body arched to meet him.

“Language,” he chided her, smirking as another curse escaped her. Ellie wiped the smugness from his face by sliding off her knickers. She followed it up with a kiss that left him gasping and disoriented. It was a bad idea, Ellie knew that somewhere in her clouded mind, but she ignored that little voice telling her to stop.

She switched places with him, taking control. Alec didn’t see it coming and it threw off his balance. She walked them back to the room and Alec stumbled after her. With each step, he got shakier and his confidence and control leaked out of him like water out of a sieve. By the time they reached the bed, he was trembling and his eyes were shining, exposing a vulnerability beneath the longing that Ellie was unprepared for. She was about to ask him if he was alright, but he was already clumsily but hastily unzipping his trousers and stripping himself of his briefs and the last of his defenses along with them. Tripping over the clothes, he collided with her and they landed in a tangle of limbs on the bed.

“Are you alright?” they asked each other at the same time, as he propped himself up on his elbows. Her palm went to his chest, splaying her fingers over that organ that had brought them together and would tear them apart. It wasn’t quite steady, but it was the closest thing to a reassuring normal she’d ever known. That was all she ever wanted from him, if he could only understand.

“Ellie, I’m more than alright,” he whispered and kissed her forehead. Ellie couldn’t argue with him. Not when his whole heart was in his eyes. Not when his hands and his mouth were reverently paying homage to every part of her body that another man had left stained with filthy fingerprints. Not when he told her over and over again that she was beautiful, silently and wordlessly, until it finally rolled off his lips.

“You’re beautiful,” he said again, sketching her with his gaze and drawing the rest of the picture of how he saw her with the gentle touch of his hands. “So, _beautiful_.”

He was a man ravaged by a disease that was slowly but steadily breaking him down. But he was _beautiful_. Ellie drank him in and tried to hold onto whatever she had left of him: his pale smooth skin, his wiry arms, the hair on his chest and the trail leading downward. Ellie finally saw all of him and took him in her hand, relishing the hardness, the length and the girth and the way he reacted to her touch. She stroked the shaft and Alec shuddered, his whole body stiffening.

He made that sound again in the back of his throat, but this time it rumbled through him until it was a growl.

“I _want_ you, Ellie. I _need_ you.”

The way he said it and the way he looked at her made her feel powerful. It made her feel like she was taking back another piece of herself that Joe had stolen from her, and it made her feel like she was the strong woman that Alec always imagined her to be.

“Ellie, I-” His voice and face had softened, but that insatiable need hadn’t. And yet, Alec was still holding onto something that was on the tip of his tongue and Ellie wasn’t sure if she wanted him to let go of it. Not tonight.

She searched his face, but she was too close to think anymore. Rolling him over onto his back, Ellie got on top of him. She straddled him and Alec’s fluttering hands dropped to her waist. Wrapping her hand around his cock, she positioned herself and lowered her body down. Guiding him into her, she finally had what she _wanted_ , all of him inside of her and filling her with that wholeness that she couldn’t find in anyone else. And Alec’s walls crumbled as hers tightened around him. His eyes were wide and trusting, holding within them a heart so damaged that it was tangible. They were two broken-hearted people that had somehow found out how well they could piece themselves together. And when they joined, they _fit_.

Alec’s long fingers desperately curled around her hips, lining up with fading bruises from the last time he’d lost control. He was clutching her so tightly that it hurt, but with every thrust it got harder to remember why. Ellie pushed down on him, pushing him faster than she should have, but Alec stayed with her. He was always right there with her. Tonight was no exception. The room around them shrunk to the feel of him inside of her and those large brown eyes gazing up at her. Their memories, their ghosts, their demons, their fears and their weaknesses were forgotten. It was her and Alec. And not even the fragility of his bloody heart or the reality that this would be their first and _only_ time could come between them now, when everything else was _gone_.

They rushed toward that brink, that ledge, that edge with Ellie setting the pace. She wanted this. She _needed_ this. Alec gasped her name, his voice shaking and shifting in pitch as he let go. Ellie followed him, _breaking_ with the force of her own orgasm. And she fell, collapsing on top of his heaving chest and into his arms _._

Her body was boneless and her mind was blissfully blank. For a few minutes, the world faded away altogether.

“I love you.”

The three slurred words and the lazy kiss to the side of her head that accompanied them, tickled her ears and warmed her, but Ellie was only half-conscious. He pulled out of her and she moved off of him, snuggling into his side with her head on his chest. They lay there together as consciousness slowly seeped back in. Alec’s breathing gradually evened out, his heart mercifully steadying with every tick of the watch on his wrist.

His fingers languidly wove through her damp tresses and ran along her spine.

“Stay,” she whispered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her. His voice was heavily accented, betraying the fact that he was drifting off and drifting further and further away from her.

It was a lie but Ellie swallowed it anyway. In the morning he would leave her but tonight he was hers. She fell asleep, encircled in his arms and enfolded in his scent, the heat of his body and the overwhelming feeling that she was _wanted_ and _loved_.

Alec had helped her find another piece of herself that had been torn from her. And tomorrow, when they parted, she’d be strong enough to walk out of that room and into a new life without him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this chapter forty-two million times and my three editors probably want to murder me after I ambushed them with multiple drafts. It only took 2.5 years and 34 chapters, but I know some of you have been waiting for that since you started reading this fic. We might have slightly different definitions of what SLOW BURN means, but it happened eventually! I hope it turned out okay and didn’t disappoint. Feel free to be honest.


	35. When the Rain Stopped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you nannyogg123/mykelara, pgilmour75, Lily Dragon for patiently reading through this and finding all my stupid mistakes. And thank you for leaving kudos/ comments/reviews! You guys are amazing and I’d be looking at another six year plan if it wasn’t for all of you! So, sorry it took me so long. This was another tough chapter for me to write, goodbyes are always hard. 
> 
> Dear SEA, some memories fade and slip away, but others stay with you forever.

The rain had stopped. Blinking up at the ceiling, Alec heard it in the silence. It seemed odd that he sensed the absence of the rain before he was aware of the warm body melded with his. But as he glanced down at Ellie, snuggled so closely into his side, he felt as if she was a part of him now. He breathed in deeply, registering the tightness in his chest that had woken him. His heart had been stronger than he had expected as far as handling the stress and strain, but he couldn’t ignore it anymore. Ellie couldn’t fix him. Sometimes she instinctively knew his body better than he did, but other times she forgot herself and brought out a recklessness in him that always had repercussions. They wouldn’t have been here now if she hadn’t challenged him to cross a line that should have never been breached.

 

And yet he didn’t regret it.

 

She claimed she was a light sleeper, but she always slept more comfortably with him. Checking his watch, he carefully moved her and sat up. The dizziness struck him as soon as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, but it wasn’t bad enough to hinder him from going through the motions. The last bottle, one of the recent additions, gave him a bit of trouble. It was because he’d never cracked the seal. He stared at the label, glanced over his shoulder at Ellie clutching the pillow he’d relinquished to her, and tossed it into his carryall without opening it.

 

She stirred as he curled himself around her, snaking his arms around her torso. The vertigo and the pain subsided with every breath she took. He burrowed his nose into her neck, inhaling her scent mixed with his own. He’d put on track bottoms and given her one of his T-shirts, as well as the dry woolen jumper they’d left on the floor of the loo. Tomorrow he’d take the smell of her with him, hanging onto a memory that would linger like the snowy day she’d stolen his scarf and the many, many times she’d worn his coat.

 

Alec kissed her pulse and wondered how she’d always made him feel so _alive_. Even in those first weeks when he couldn’t stand her, Ellie had gotten under his skin and reached him in a way that no one else had since he left his daughter behind. He thought about the last bottle; the one that would regulate his heart, but would cost him his _life_. He shivered at the prospect of the long, dark, numbing weeks he had ahead of him, and Ellie felt it too.

 

“Are you alright?” she whispered and rolled onto her back to look at him.

 

“More than alright,” he assured her. His heart was beating irregularly but steadily in his chest, and he had a beautiful woman in his bed for the rest of the night.

 

“What time is it?” Ellie asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and searching for her phone on the nightstand. She squinted as the screen blinded her.

 

“It’s only quarter past nine,” she observed with some surprise. “I can say goodnight.” She sat up against the headboard and called Tom. Alec tried to give her some privacy, but Ellie caught his arm. “You’re not leaving this room,” she told him fiercely. Alec didn’t fight her.

 

He stayed with her, half listening to the one-sided conversation as she combed her fingers through his hair, scraping her nails occasionally over his scalp. He bit back a moan when she scratched a particularly sensitive spot. Ellie smirked, but her face suddenly fell and her hand left his hair.

 

“Where did you hear that?” she asked sharply, tensing up. Alec soothingly stroked her arm. “No, I’m not angry anymore.” His hand paused at her elbow. “Yes, sweetheart,” she sighed. “He’s at the Traders.”

 

Alec froze. Ellie thrust her fingers into her curls, pushing them from her forehead. He scrambled to sit up against the headboard beside her, mouthing questions that she ignored. She squeezed her eyes shut, but her free hand found his bent knee before he could go anywhere.

 

“Yeah, I’m with him.”

 

Alec swore under his breath and buried his head in his hands.

 

“No, he’s not,” Ellie’s voice broke or perhaps he imagined it. She sniffed and wiped her nose. “Because he’s going _home_ , sweetheart.”

 

_Home_.

 

Their eyes locked. Home was Broadchurch. Home was a never-ending sky and the smell of smoke and salt in the air. Home was the roar of the ocean and Ellie’s laughter ringing in his ears. Home was Fred’s warm weight against his chest and his sticky hands in his hair. Home was an open door and Tom solemnly promising to make his mother proud and take care of her when Alec was gone. Home was a bed with rumpled sheets and clothes, tangled limbs and sleep without nightmares or fear. And home was a woman he _loved_ beside him.

 

“He wants to talk to you,” she said softly, looking at him.

 

Alec swallowed and then motioned for her to give him the mobile. Their fingers brushed as the object passed between them. He brought it up to his ear, holding Ellie’s gaze.

 

“Hi.” Alec was expecting Tom. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

 

“ _Daddy_!” Fred squealed. Alec’s heart stuttered in his chest.

 

“Fred,” he croaked. Ellie stared at him until he was forced to turn away. Her son babbled on about his day and Alec listened. In spite of the circumstances, Fred made him smile and laugh. Alec had a difficult time keeping the conversation short, even though it was late and Fred should not have been up. There was a flicker of hope in Ellie’s eyes that Alec hadn’t seen in a long time and he clung to it for a few more minutes. They didn’t correct or explain to Fred that Alec wasn’t _Daddy_. Ellie dropped her head to his shoulder and as Alec wound his arm around her, he could almost pretend that it was true.

 

“Are you coming home, Daddy?”

 

Alec’s heart skipped a beat and the dream shattered.

 

“Not tonight, Fred,” Alec told him and those three little words slipped past his quivering lips, “I love you.” He quickly said goodnight and handed the phone off to Ellie, before wee Fred could ask any more questions or destroy what was left of Alec’s breaking heart. Ellie whispered a few soft words, talked to Tom for a moment, and then ended the call and returned it to the nightstand.

 

“You did that on purpose,” Alec realized. Ellie’s eyes glittered in the dim light of the hotel room. She’d used Fred as a weapon, one last desperate attempt to keep him with them in Broadchurch.

 

“Did it work?” She wasn’t ashamed. The hope blazed in her eyes as she waited for him on bated breath. He wanted to surrender to her. He wanted to go home with her. He wanted to stay with her. Instead he took her face between his long fingers and he _crushed_ her with a hard kiss that crushed every last bit of hope she had left.

 

The bruising kiss backfired on him.

 

Ellie was stronger than him now. A lot stronger. And she was willing to do _anything_ to remind him of everything he would lose if he left her. His resolve was weakening but his heart was too. She couldn’t feel it or understand that they couldn’t do this again. By the time he was able to stop her, both T-shirts and his jumper were on the floor somewhere, and Ellie had him nailed to the mattress and entirely at her mercy.

 

“You’re sure I can’t change your mind?” she challenged him one more time. She nudged his nose with hers and her curls tickled his cheeks. If Alec had thought that one time would be enough, he was sorely mistaken. Temptation was heavy in the air around them, but the pressure Ellie was putting on him had aroused him and pushed his heart too far. 

 

Alec shoved her off of him and swept the pills off the nightstand. He coughed up the plastic and spat it out. The fit didn’t stop until Ellie gently rubbed his back. They were past the point where they had to apologize, but Alec tried anyway. Ellie told him to shut up.

 

He picked up the discarded jumper and gave it to her again. She put it on but they didn’t bother with the T-shirts. Ellie dragged him back into bed with her, resting her head on his bare chest. His heart was calm again and Ellie was content with cuddling, but something else was bothering him other than his inability to give her what they both wanted and their fast approaching goodbye.

 

“ _Shit_!” he hissed, when it finally occurred to him. “We didn’t use anything,” he blurted out, horrified. Ellie looked up at him as he raked his fingers through his hair and bit down on his lip.

 

“Well, you were a bit _distracted_ ,” Ellie reminded him, drawing a line on his chest with her fingernail. “You don’t have any condoms?”

 

“Of course, I don’t. It’s not like I was planning on shagging you,” Alec snapped. Ellie’s eyebrows shot up and Alec blushed.

 

“Are you telling me that you _never_ thought that this might happen?”

 

“It hasn’t even been two weeks since I snogged you in a bar. I didn’t really have that much time to think about it.” He tugged at his ear as Ellie continued to stare at him skeptically. His face was so flushed now that he could literally feel the heat coming off of it. “Alright, it may have crossed my mind once or twice,” Ellie’s eyes bore into him and he confessed, “Okay, I thought about it a lot, it was hard not to when I was with you.” Their gazes met.

 

“You could’ve popped into the chemist in the center of town-”

 

“God, no,” Alec interrupted her, covering his face with his hand. “Can you imagine how those _people_ would react if they saw me with a box of-” Ellie burst into a fresh round of giggles and Alec laughed. He had to let go of her when his laughter turned into that awful hacking noise again. It didn’t last long. Alec sniggered and propped himself up against the headboard and the wall behind him.

 

“You’ve got nothing to worry about, I have an IUD,” she assured him, patting his leg.

 

“Thank god,” he sighed.

 

“After Fred cried for a straight week, I got one as soon as possible.”

 

Alec snorted and tipped his head back.

 

“I seriously considered a vasectomy after Keira took a permanent marker to our CS’ office and then flooded the whole second floor of the house.”

 

“How did that even happen?” Ellie gaped at him.

 

“Don’t ask,” Alec said, holding up a hand and shaking his head. The memory lingered and Alec was reminded again of the past he’d lost as well as the future he would never live to see. They sat there in the silence, coming down off of that high. They were lost somewhere amongst the memories of their happier pasts, the frightening present and the forked road outside of those four walls where their paths would diverge.

 

“I wanted to meet her,” Ellie said.

 

Alec looked at her.

 

“Me too.”

 

Ellie knew that he wasn’t only talking about _her_ meeting Keira. She reached over, lacing their fingers together.

 

“You’ll talk to her, Alec, I know you will.”

 

Alec kissed her temple and left his forehead there. He wanted to believe her, and if anyone could have made him believe, it would’ve been Ellie. She’d showed him that he was capable of more love and strength than he ever thought was possible, taking a skeleton key to his heart and unlocking a rusty safe where he’d put her and her two boys. But now that it was coming to an end, he didn’t want to get his hopes up again. It always hurt more when you had false hope and there was a foreboding twist in the pit of his stomach.

 

“What time do you have to leave?” she asked.

 

“Early. I want to be there by half past ten.” Sandbrook was far away and it felt even further from where he was now, outside of time and ensconced in a warm hotel room with Ellie beside him. “You’ll have to get back before Lucy brings the boys home in the morning,” he recalled, expelling a breath in her ear. She’d told him she’d walked too. “I can have the car drop you off,” he offered, but she shook her head. They both knew she’d have to leave well before him. Alec lifted his head and their eyes collided.

 

“Are you ready?” The words tumbled from her lips. Their departure was hours away, but this wasn’t just about leaving a hotel room or reuniting with his estranged daughter. Alec hesitated, but he caved beneath the softness of her understanding gaze.

 

“No.” His voice broke, carrying an echo of the storm that had threatened to drown him in the shower. She’d stepped in to keep him afloat and he’d tried to take her down with him.

 

He fled from her, disentangling their limbs and crawling out of the bed under the excuse of needing to use the loo. The bright light blinded him and exposed the mess they’d left in their torrid wake. Their discarded clothing hung from doors and drying racks, still damp even though outside the rain had stopped. The water hadn’t been able to wash away everything but it had stripped him of every last one of his defenses. Ellie had done the rest. All she had to do was _touch_ him and his walls had fallen. He’d capitulated, yielding all that was rest of his courage, strength, faith, trust and _love_.  But they were only human and she couldn’t save him from himself.

 

Ellie rapped on the door and Alec couldn’t hide from her anymore.

 

She was waiting for him, clad in one of his jumpers that almost reached her knees. Alec marveled at the fact that physically she was smaller than him. He was weak in comparison to her as if he’d given her too much of himself, but yet it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t asking much from him, but he wished he could’ve given her more. Ellie offered to get his medication for him, but Alec needed something stronger in order to quell the ache in his chest. And there was one more thing that might help with the cure…

 

He switched off the light behind him, plunging them both into the darkness. Her eyes gleamed like a light at the end of the tunnel.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

“Not really,” he admitted, choking on those three syllables. He swallowed hard and found her in the shadows. Pulling her into a hug, he stroked her hair. Ellie tensed up, but relaxed once she was certain his heart was still beating. For now.

 

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asked after several minutes had passed and he thought he might be ready. Ellie let go to stare at him. Their eyes had adjusted by now, her worried features sharpening into his focus.

 

“Okay,” she conceded, trusting him. Alec brushed past her to retrieve it from the nightstand. Ellie trailed after him.

 

“What are you doing?” she inquired. He found his coat and rummaged through the pockets until he found his glasses. Putting them on, he perched on the foot of the bed with Ellie’s mobile. She came up behind him, wrapping her arms around him.

 

“Are you trying to steal my phone again?” she teased him, kissing his bare shoulder.

 

“I didn’t steal your phone,” he protested, unlocking the screen and searching for the contacts.

 

“You’re jealous that I have a nicer phone than you do,” she accused him. 

 

“Only because you stepped on mine,” he snorted. Ellie didn’t deny it and he leaned into her as she hugged him closer.

 

He could feel her watching him as he finished creating the new contact. His thumb paused on the screen, so it wouldn’t lock itself until Ellie had read it. Tom hadn’t understood, but she would. 

 

“You can call this number if you or the boys ever need anything,” he said and passed the smart phone over his shoulder to her. Ellie’s arms fell away from him and he immediately felt the loss of her body heat. Taking off his glasses, he tiredly rubbed his eyelids with his index finger. It didn’t help the sting.

 

“I donnae want you making the trip to see an empty hole and a pile of dirt,” he told her firmly, his accent emphasizing the weight of his words, “And I donnae want you waiting for _it_ or even _thinking_ about it. But if you really need to hear it, I’ll tell them to call you when I die.” 

 

Ellie didn’t say anything and Alec was scared to look at her. He’d hoped that this would mentally prepare him to leave her and make him feel a wee bit better about it. Ellie rustled behind him. The bed shook and then the door to the loo slammed shut. He stared at the closed door and debated whether he should drag her out. But he’d wind up hurting her more than he already had.

 

Picking up his coat, he threw it across the room. He flopped onto the bed with an arm flung over his face and his glasses dangling from his fingers. It was a long time before his eyes stopped burning and even longer before the door cracked open. Her bare feet were noiseless on the carpet, but Alec could sense her at the edge of the bed, hovering over him.

 

“I’m not dead yet, in case you’re wondering,” he snapped, when the seconds stretched into minutes.

 

“Then why are you acting like it,” she shot back and Alec lowered his arm to blink up at her. She was glowering with her arms crossed over her chest. He sat up too fast and immediately regretted it. The brief spike of pain in his chest was amplified by Ellie’s wide-eyed panic and the flash of guilt that accompanied it. He grimaced as he settled against the headboard but dismissed the pills.

 

“It’s not that bad,” he insisted and tossed his glasses onto the nightstand. “Come here.” He held his arms out for her and she went to him. It took them a moment to get comfortable again, as if Alec had upset a delicate balance, when he’d told her he didn’t want her at his grave, but he’d have someone inform her when it was finally over.

 

“I was trying to help,” he said, weaving his fingers through her snarled curls.

 

“That wasn’t helpful, that was you being an insensitive knob,” Ellie retorted and flinched when he got his finger stuck in a knot.

 

“Sorry,” he apologized, carefully untangling it. “I don’t know how to do this.”

 

“Then stop trying to before you pull my hair out because your hand’s shaking,” she grumbled.

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Alec said, moving away from her and bending his knees like a wall between them. Resting his elbows atop his kneecaps, he laced his trembling fingers together in front of him.

 

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he explained.

 

“ _This_?” Ellie frowned and sat up. “Alec, you’re not making any sense.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. Ellie dragged her nails through his hair and massaged the tight muscles between his shoulders until he came undone. Taking a deep breath, he confessed.

 

“I’m afraid to leave you.”

 

Ellie stilled. The tick of his watch filled the room, counting down the precious seconds they had left together. His heart beat got louder and louder. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible over the pounding.

 

“I’m _terrified_ of losing you.”

 

She looped her arm through his and leaned against him. He saw the same raw fear reflected in her eyes and everything came to a halt.

****

“Don’t go,” she pleaded softly.

 

Alec reached over to cover her hand on his arm. She was frightened, but it wasn’t simply because he was dying. For the last eleven months, they’d been there for each other. She’d broken down in his arms and he’d comforted her until he couldn’t anymore. Now, she was the one holding him and Alec was the one who wasn’t ready to let go. But she’d be _fine_.

 

“This is the hardest part,” he admitted, rubbing his thumb over hers. “Once I’m gone and you’ve moved on, you’ll be alright,” he reassured her again, because it helped him to remember that this was what was best for her and her boys. Ellie disagreed, shaking her head and releasing his arm. Cupping his face between her hands, she looked him in the eye.

 

“You don’t have to do this alone,” she said, caressing his cheeks. There were tears in her eyes. “I know you’re not ready to go and I know that you want to stay with me,” she whispered, kissing his forehead. “You’re _scared_ , Alec. And so am I.” Alec bit down hard on his lip as she blurred before him. He managed to hold himself together, barely. Ellie knew that he was defenseless; she had battled the fortress he’d built around himself until she’d shattered every last barrier between them. She could’ve handled him like a piece of glass and taken advantage of his fragility, but she offered him the choice that he hadn’t allowed her.

 

“I understand that you have to see your daughter and your aunt. And I know that you don’t like the idea of us taking care of you, especially with my children around, but I think you should come back, even if it’s just to visit.” She searched his face. Alec knew she saw his lip quivering between his teeth and how perilously close he was to crying, but she pretended that she didn’t. Clumsily wiping the shining streak on her cheek with his palm, he focused on drying her tears so that he could control his own.

 

“You don’t have to make a decision right now,” she said, carding her fingers through his hair and soothing him. “All I’m asking is that you _consider_ it. Can you do that for me?”

 

Alec nodded.

 

“We can discuss this after you see your daughter tomorrow, okay?”

 

He bowed his head and Ellie brushed her lips over his forehead again. Her touch was so light and tentative that he didn’t notice when it stopped. Alec was grateful that she gave him the space he needed to pull himself together, but it killed him seeing her struggling to do the same with her head burrowed into a pillow. They didn’t want to waste the time they had left with each other, breaking down all over again. Alec gingerly rubbed her back and paid for it with a shock of static electricity. Ellie shuddered and he saw sparks as she curled in on herself. Wordlessly, he aligned his body with hers, but he didn’t dare do more than rest his hand on her shoulder. Eventually, she twisted around to look at him with dry eyes.

 

“You know what’s strange,” Ellie wondered. “I want you to live with us but I hardly know you.”

 

There was no accusation in her eyes, or anger or fear. This wasn’t about a breach of trust. Her face was open and curious.

 

“I’m not a stranger. You know me better than anyone else,” he confessed, because it was true right now. She didn’t know who he’d been before he came to Broadchurch, when he’d had a loving family and a successful career behind him. But even though he’d known her for less than a year, he felt like she’d been a part of his life and a part of himself for longer.

 

“I know,” Ellie agreed. They were both aware that Alec had no desire to socially interact with anyone else except for his daughter, but even that was a heartbreakingly daunting task.

 

“You always seem so…” she trailed off, wrinkling her brow and seeking the right words. “You’re always in a suit.”

 

“That’s not true,” Alec protested, but Ellie interrupted him.

 

“I mean, you’re dressed in layers. It’s like you’re afraid to take them off,” she explained, laboring to make him understand.

 

“ _You_ had no problem getting them off,” Alec reminded her, smirking and plucking an imaginary piece of lint from his jumper that she was wearing.

 

“I wasn’t talking about _that_ ,” she clarified and added, “Although that was more difficult than it should have been too.”

 

Alec opened his mouth, but Ellie talked over him. “You didn’t want me to call you Alec, and it wasn’t just because you hate your name. And, it was _months_ before I found out your daughter’s name, and that was only because you made up a fairytale for my son.”

 

“I didn’t want to talk about her,” Alec said and Ellie curled her hand over his.

 

“I understand.” She stroked his knuckles with her thumb. “And I know that there are some things that you still don’t want to talk about. There are things about myself that I don’t want to talk about either.” Alec couldn’t help but speculate about what she might not be sharing with him, because he felt like she’d been forced to bare her soul to him. And yet he had only scratched the surface of who she was, even if it did seem like he’d known her for so much longer than eleven months.

 

She let go of his hand, pressing her palms together and tucking them beneath her cheek. Alec braced himself, waiting for her to verbally assault him, but Ellie remained silent. He stretched out his hand and replaced a tendril behind her ear.

 

“What do you want to know?” he queried.

 

She shrugged, leaving it up to him. Alec gently traced the lines and creases forming at the corners of her eyes and tried to imagine what she’d been like before they’d been there, before him, before Fred and Tom, and before she met the bastard that would wreck her happy life.

 

“My first case was a missing person’s case,” he began quietly.

 

“Really?”

 

Alec’s mouth twitched as he nodded. He told her the story of when he was green and young and naïve in Scotland, and the lads had thought it would be hilarious to put him in charge of finding Bill.

 

“Did you find him?” Ellie wondered, her eyes round.

 

“Eventually,” Alec recalled, cracking a smile. “Once I figured out that Bill was the name of a bloody llama.”

 

Ellie roared with laughter and he grinned widely. In retrospect, it was comical but it had been humiliating. It had been years before he had been able to live it down. Listening to the ringing sound of Ellie’s laughter, he thought that it had been worth every jibe and guffaw he’d endured over the years.

 

“What was yours?” he asked once the echo of her laughter had faded away. He wanted to know what she’d been like when she was young and untouched and new. He wanted to know everything.

 

“Another missing person’s case,” she admitted, hesitantly, “Sort of like yours but a bit _weird_.” He was intrigued by the prospect that she could top his disastrous first, and Ellie reluctantly continued, “The woman was being _haunted_.”

 

Alec’s eyebrows shot up, but his interest had been peaked. Ellie tried to explain. “She lost her son. He was killed overseas and they shipped his ashes back in a box.” Ellie exhaled heavily, but forced herself to go on, “Years later, this woman started receiving phone calls from her son.”

 

“The same son that-”

 

Ellie nodded.

 

“A ghost story, eh?” Alec couldn’t help his morbid curiosity.

 

“Something like that,” she agreed and studied him. “The boys thought it’d be funny to throw that one at me. They thought she’d gone mad.”

 

“Well, _obviously_ ,” Alec stated drily. “People don’t come back from the dead. I hope you didn’t have to institutionalize her.”

 

“No, Alec, someone was extorting her for money,” Ellie snapped, glaring at him. “It was an open and shut case once I pointed it out to them. They got the guy. Turns out he’d done it before with another grieving mother…” She faltered, avoiding his gaze. Alec’s heart sunk as he belatedly realized where this was headed. “Even after all those years, the woman couldn’t accept that her son was dead. The man didn’t sound like her son, or act like her son, or say anything that should’ve made her believe him; but after years of desperately longing and hoping that he wasn’t dead, it was exactly what she wanted to hear…” The silence in the room was deafening. Ellie smoothed the sheet, analyzing the thread count. She sucked in a breath and finished her story, “She was willing to give up her life savings just to _talk_ to him. I gave it all back to her and brought her in to see the guy and made him apologize, but she didn’t want to hear the truth.”

 

The minutes dragged out. They didn’t believe in ghosts, not _those_ kinds of ghosts, but there was one there with them. Now he was always there, shadowing Alec’s every move until the day he’d finally cloak and smother Alec, snuffing out whatever Ellie and her boys had sparked that he thought he’d lost in Sandbrook.

 

“I should’ve changed the subject but you wanted to know,” Ellie sniffled and shook her head. “Of all the questions you could’ve asked-”

 

“It’s okay,” he said, touching her cheek. He ran his knuckles over the curve of her face and struggled to think of something, anything to drive the ghost of his oncoming death from that room. “You don’t believe in that crackpot nonsense, I mean ghosts and the boogey man. Do you?” he inquired, praying that she wasn’t that silly.

 

“God, no,” Ellie snorted and then after a moment, she poked him in the chest. “Don’t you dare test me. No mysterious slamming doors, creaking floorboards, popping up in cemeteries or appearing in mirrors-” Alec rolled his eyes and leaned over. Yanking open the drawer in the nightstand beside him, he shuffled things around until he found the Bible. He dumped it onto the bed and Ellie stared at him as if he’d lost his bloody mind. 

 

Dead serious, he gravely put one hand on the Bible and raised his other. 

 

“I, Alec Hardy, solemnly swear that I will restrain myself from floating through walls, materializing in your bedroom at night, moaning and groaning and rattling pipes in the dark-” Ellie picked up the Bible and smacked him with it before he could go on. Alec burst out laughing.

 

“That’s not funny!” She threw the book at him and Alec caught it against his chest. He couldn’t stop laughing at her. Ellie fought valiantly against the tide of laughter, but she lost it when he started moaning and groaning. “ _Alec_! You’re such a-” He sloppily kissed her and she giggled. Tossing the book off the bed, he snogged her until they forgot what was so funny in the first place.

 

They were both smiling when they broke apart. Ellie’s eyes were so impossibly bright that they seemed to sparkle. A memory would never do her or this moment justice and humans could only memorize so much. But Alec tried anyway, detailing and cataloguing everything about her. One last time. 

 

“Ask me something else,” he urged, drinking her in. Ellie considered the question, then her smile widened.

 

“First time you fell in love.”

 

Alec couldn’t recall the first time he fell in love, but he knew that this would be the last time.

 

“You,” he said, seriously. Ellie’s eyes widened and then she hit him.

 

“You’re a bloody liar!” 

 

Alec dodged her, sniggering.

 

“You had a wife, Alec. I’m assuming that you must’ve felt _something_ for her if you married her,” she reminded him, prodding his arm.

 

“Then why are you asking me?” he sighed.

 

“Oh, come on. You told me you didn’t meet her until you were in your twenties, surely you must’ve had at least one girlfriend before then,” she teased him, propping herself up on an elbow.

 

“ _Girlfriend_ ,” Alec repeated her, scrunching up his nose. “I never liked that term.”

 

“Then what were they?” Ellie interrogated him. “Flames? Flings?”

 

“I don’t know.” Alec shrugged. He’d briefly dated a few girls and slept with one or two of them, but none of them had amounted to anything more than a couple of months, and nothing like what he’d had with Vicky or what he had with Ellie now… He looked at her and noted the frown that meant he’d screwed up somewhere.

****

“They weren’t like you,” he rushed to reassure her. “We didn’t really talk,” he defended himself, “just went to dinner and snogged…” He trailed off because he didn’t know how to explain the difference and he was digging himself into a hole.

 

“You didn’t even take me on a date,” she realized, horrified. “I don’t think you ever even _flirted_ with me.”

 

“I took you out,” he protested. “Last weekend.”

 

“I took _you_ out,” Ellie argued. “I think your eyes popped out of your head when you saw that I was in a skirt. You weren’t expecting that.”

 

“You had a boyfriend,” he recalled with difficulty. It seemed like ages ago. Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t remember the bloke’s name. “And I did flirt with you.”

 

Ellie arched her eyebrows and Alec scowled.

 

“I was flirting with you.”

 

“Sure, you were,” Ellie said, skeptic and grinning.

 

“I was!” Alec insisted vehemently. “I even got you flowers, chocolate and a bloody ring.”

 

“If a dead flower ripped up from someone’s garden, an after dinner chocolate stolen from a restaurant, and a bauble Fred tried to swallow was your idea of flirting-” He cut her off, tugging her toward him and into another kiss. He was forced to stop because Ellie was chortling. Alec hovered over her and impatiently waited until she was finished and ready to take him seriously.

 

“If I’d had time, I would’ve done things right,” he said quietly, gazing at her. Ellie sobered up immediately. “I would’ve taken you on dates, and gotten you gifts, and I would’ve kept my promises, and taken care of the kids, and I wouldn’t have let you down.”

****

“Alec,” Ellie sighed, “It’s not about the dates or the gifts. I’m not expecting-”

 

“I would’ve treated you like you _deserved_ to be treated,” he interrupted her, his voice cracking. “I would’ve given you _everything_.” He swallowed hard and mapped out her facial features with his eyes.

 

“ _This_ was not some fleeting fling or a quick shag,” he told her. “Not for me.”

 

Alec didn’t tell her that he was in love with her. He didn’t think he had to. He’d been showing her, well before he realized it himself. It was written and spoken in everything he’d done for her and her sons. It wasn’t anywhere near enough, but it was all he had left to give.

 

“I still don’t consider that flirting,” she joked, “I think you can work on communication.” Alec sighed again, exasperated.

 

“Not everything has to be verbal,” he pointed out.

 

“Oh, really?” Ellie curved her hand at the nape of his neck, toying with his hair. He really should have gotten that haircut, because she was pushing the limits of his self-control whenever she got her fingers in his shaggy hair.

 

“I’m good at non-verbal communication,” he practically purred, sliding his hand up her bare thigh. “Very good.”

 

He proved it to her, flipping her onto her back. Ellie shrieked his name, laughing and squirming. And Alec let up, sniggering and so completely and utterly in love with her. They spent the next two hours tossing questions back and forth and Alec learned and memorized as much as he could about her. The melody of her voice lulled him and he closed his eyes on a smile he’d never forget. He fell asleep with his heart and mind full of her and he thought that he could’ve slipped away peacefully, right there within her arms.

 

*

 

Alec swore he wouldn’t but he does _haunt_ her. She’s not sure where the bloody hell he is or in what plane of existence he’s residing, but she’s almost certain that in some way or form he’s still with her.

 

Every time a door slams, she jumps. And on the few occasions she’s gone back to Danny’s grave, she half expects him to be there, gloomily lurking amongst the tombstones and watching her. She doesn’t hear moaning and groaning, and the pipes don’t rattle. He doesn’t materialize in her bedroom, or float through walls, or pop up in mirrors. But somehow she still feels like he’s watching her.

 

She thinks she sees him sometimes, but she always felt that way about Joe too. Her therapist tells her that it’s normal when someone experiences a loss. And Ellie has lost a lot. She learns to live with it because she doesn’t have a choice. It got better once she convinced herself that Joe was locked away. Alec’s too hard to lock up; he roams through her dreams and on rare occasions follows her out of them. He never stays for more than a passing glance.

 

Except for one horrible night when she’s so exhausted, so helpless, so alone and so _scared_. That’s when she _needs_ him.

 

And suddenly he’s _there_.

 

She can’t remember exactly what was said or what she threw at him or if she even saw his face, but she _knows_ it was him. His palm was cool against her forehead and his woolen jumper was soft against her cheek. He stroked her hair and reassured her that everything would be alright, and Ellie would’ve sobbed tears of relief if she had any strength left in her aching body. He kissed her forehead and he told her that he loved her. Those three words accompanied by his touch and her name warmed her, chasing the chill from her bones and ending the cycle of nightmares.

 

When she opens her eyes to a bright room and a new day, things are better, much better, and Alec is _gone_.

 

Ellie would’ve thought it was only a dream. But Fred tells her that _Daddy_ came to visit. She writes it off as another example of her son’s expansive imagination. He believes in Santa Clause, and the Easter Bunny, and sometimes he has imaginary playmates. Fred points out things in his coloring book that Daddy drew, and Ellie nods and checks his temperature.

 

And then Fred turns to a page where he’s written out his name. Fred’s smart, but not that smart. He hasn’t quite gotten to reading or writing yet. Not even his name. But someone had scrawled it in shaky block letters as well as other simple words like “cat” and “dog”. Tom’s name is there and hers, but her last name’s spelled wrong. And when she flips the page over –

 

Ellie drops the coloring book, spilling crayons everywhere.

 

She stares at it, shocked. Fred starts whining and Ellie is forced to pick it up for him, when all she wants to do is burn it.

 

Someone had taken great pains to write _Keira_ and then below it _Alec Hardy_. It had to have been Tom, she tells herself, but he’s written it out three times with the same unsteadiness that would’ve been expected of a child that didn’t know how to hold a pencil properly. Perhaps it was her son and someone had taught him and never told her… Except at the very bottom is an attempt to mimic a signature that’s alarmingly familiar to Ellie. She would know; she had to forge it when he’d distractedly forgotten to sign off on the bloody paperwork during the Latimer case.

 

That night Ellie keeps a vigil at her son’s bedside with the coloring book lying out like bait. It’s ridiculous but Ellie waits in the dark all night, anticipating a supernatural encounter with a ghost that might not have ever left. She never would’ve entertained the idea but she had felt like he’d been there in the room with her. Last night, she’d _needed_ him, and she could almost believe that Alec would’ve fought through hell or high water just to reach her.

 

He doesn’t come back.

 

Ellie doesn’t know if she’s relieved or disappointed. Upon further examination, she realizes that it can’t possibly be Alec’s handwriting and the signature’s no more than another scribble. She silently breaks all the crayons and trashes them along with the coloring book. Tom turns red when she asks him if it was him, but fesses up to it with the excuse that Fred kept asking about _Daddy_. Ellie thinks he could be lying, but for the last two days, Fred’s been screaming and wailing for Daddy. They’re all relieved that he’s better now, and that he’s finally stopped.

 

Some days Fred tells her stories about his alleged adventures with Daddy, but other days Fred cries and asks when his Daddy is coming home. Those are the days that Ellie hates, but she always gives him the same answer.

 

“Not today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coloring books I hear are very good for stress relief. Personally, I find snapping crayons more satisfying but please don’t try to throw them at me. You’ll only damage the screen. The next one’s 80% written so I should update a lot faster.


	36. Daylight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special thanks to Nannyogg123/Mykelara for reading this months ago and listening to me whine and bitch about it over and over again. I never would’ve gotten to this point if it wasn’t for her constant support, feedback and willingness to read through my boring drafts multiple times. Seriously, she’s brilliant and if you haven’t read A Million Holes Poked in the Soul, you should, because I was in tears by the end. Thank you to pgilmour75 for reading through yet another chapter and always pointing out what I miss! And thanks to all of you that left kudos, comments and reviews! You guys are fantastic!
> 
> Dear SEA, we still have that photograph you took of the sun rising over the ocean, plastered all over refrigerators, mantles, walls and social media. The words they chose are meaningless and unnecessary; it’s the pictures that tell your story.

Light crept into the room as time slunk out of it. The blind on the window had kept the darkness caged within those four walls for the past three days; but now slivers of light breached the edges, serving as traitorous reminders that their final hours had slipped away. A brightening crack beneath the door glowed eerily in the shadowed room, chasing the ghosts of the delusions they’d entertained under the cover of one more night together.

Ellie stole out of the bed and Alec stirred. He squinted at her and then his eyelids drooped, as he was swept into the current of another hazy dream. When he forced them open again, Ellie had showered and was dressed in her wrinkled clothes from yesterday.

Alec panicked. He shot up and his heart rate did too. Coughing uncontrollably, he struggled to calm down and sit up against the headboard. For weeks, he’d mentally prepared himself for this moment, but it still killed him to let her go.

Ellie didn’t ask him if he was alright, she knew that he wasn’t. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she passed him two of the bitter white pills and a glass of water. Alec swallowed them, but he couldn’t swallow the idea of her leaving. Not yet. He reached for her hand and she squeezed his fingers reassuringly.

“I thought you’d left without-” He halted, because he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to _say_ goodbye to her.

“I would _never_ leave you,” Ellie said, fiercely. She kissed his temple, reminding him that he was leaving _her_. He stared at their entwined fingers until he had to break the link between them. Setting the glass on the nightstand, he seized the nearest pill bottle. By the time he’d taken it, Ellie had unscrewed the lid of the other one and had two more pills for him. Alec tossed them back with the water. Ellie picked up one of the recent prescriptions, puzzling over the label. He snatched it from her before she could try to handfeed him those too. His face flushed with humiliation, even though it wasn’t her fault that he’d been reduced to this miserable state.

Ellie opened her mouth to snap at him, but changed her mind. She rubbed his shoulder and stood, walking away from a potential row and giving him the illusion of privacy. Alec loved her even more for understanding and not attacking what little pride he had left. He finished with the medications and packed them up in his carryall, once again ignoring the untouched bottle that would smother the fire that had brought them to this room.

A drug wouldn’t be able to stifle those memories, or extinguish a feeling as strong as what he felt right now. He had already been consumed by her. The medications were forgotten as he watched her in the mirror, putting on the earrings that he’d removed last night. She retrieved her necklace from where he’d placed it, and noticed his gaze reflected in the glass.

Returning to the bed, she perched at the foot of it beside him.

“Can you untangle this?” she asked and held out the silver necklace to him. She could’ve untied it herself, but Alec’s longer fingers were more agile and suitable for loosening the small knot in the fine chain. He suspected that it hadn’t been there a minute ago and that Ellie was enjoying this.

“Did I ever mention how much I love you?” Ellie sighed in relief as he easily straightened it out. The sound of those three words almost made him drop the chain, but one glance at Ellie, still fixated on his fingers, was enough to confirm that it was an empty declaration. She wasn’t in _love_ with him, not yet anyway. The words actually hurt, because it was a habit carried over from a marriage that had officially ended, but was so fresh in her mind that it was ingrained in her speech and mannerisms.

“More than chocolate?” he quipped, recollecting a sweet exchange he’d heard between her and Tom.

“Definitely not,” Ellie snorted and Alec sniggered.

“Turn around,” he told her.

Ellie gathered her mess of curls in one hand, twisting them on top of her head. Alec put the necklace on her and clasped it. Dipping his head, his mouth grazed the smooth skin by her collarbone that the scooped neck of her jumper exposed. He curved his arms around her and slowly kissed his way up the column of her throat. Ellie let down her hair and the tendrils tickled his nose and cheek. Crooking a finger beneath his chin, she drew him in for a languorous kiss. As he gently urged her closer, he could almost forget for a moment that this was the end of _them_ instead of the beginning.

“Good morning,” he murmured against her lips, when he felt her pulling away like a wave lazily lapping a shoreline on a calm day.

“You're getting the hang of this,” Ellie chuckled. “Next you'll start saying hello to people and asking how they are.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Alec retorted. They looked at each other, recalling everything they’d dared to hope for over the last few months before it had all been lost.

“What time do you have to leave?”

“Not yet,” she said and cupped his cheek. “We've got time, plenty of time,” she lied to him, blinking back tears.

She kissed him like they had all the time in the world. And Alec wanted to believe it.

All things come to an end, and that last snog was no exception. They wanted to savor every precious second together and go far enough to forget about the time; but it was unavoidable. The bloody alarm clock on the nightstand went off for the first time since Alec had checked into the room; quietly seeping into their ears and the periphery of their consciousness until it got louder, and louder and _louder_.

“For fuck’s sake!” Alec growled and hit every sodding button until the thing finally shut up. Ellie denied setting an alarm and Alec swore he hadn’t touched the box, but the dreaded hour had arrived anyways. Alec raked his fingers through his mussed hair and Ellie fiddled with the strap of the camisole they’d been diligently working on removing.

“Sorry,” he sighed and tentatively tried to pick up where they’d left off, but the moment was gone. She whispered his name and Alec could hear everything she couldn’t bear to say. They shared one more hard kiss that left their lips smarting and tingling, as they slowly and painfully let go of each other. Alec found her jumper by the pillows and Ellie pulled it over her head. She got up from the bed, but came back with the jumper he’d loaned her, neatly folded in her arms.

“Thanks for-” She faltered and clutched the garment to her breast. Alec remembered how she’d dropped it and smashed one of the last barriers between them, boldly baring herself to him and _trusting_ him. And he’d surrendered and given her everything he could.

Alec stared at the sweater that smelled of her and a night that he’d never forget. It was as if they really were breaking up and returning each other’s things, almost like a normal relationship. But as Alec looked into Ellie’s eyes, he knew that all the things that had been exchanged between them were inside. He’d left marks on her that would never fade, and Ellie had given him a box full of memories that would keep her with him, long after he left Broadchurch behind. 

She gave it to him and he laid it on the bed beside him. The silence stretched between them, heavy with all the words that were still unsaid.

“Do you – do you want coffee?” Alec stammered, seizing the most mundane stupid thing that crossed his mind. He anxiously tugged at his ear. Ellie glanced at the bloody alarm clock on the nightstand, biting her lip and calculating how much time she had.

“Okay.” She started toward the side table with the tiny coffee maker and the limited options for coffee and tea. Alec hadn’t tried the coffee, but as he selected one of the bags, he hoped it wasn’t as terrible as some of the other hotels and inns he’d stayed in over the years.

“You’re going to make me a cup?” Ellie raised her eyebrows.

“I’ve made coffee for you,” he argued.

“I know,” Ellie said, smirking and resting her chin on his shoulder. “But it’s a bit weird when I remember what you were like as my boss.”

“I wasn’t _that_ bad.” He rolled his eyes.

“You were _horrible_ ,” she teased him, wrapping her arms around his torso and nuzzling his neck. “You’re still a knob, but you make a bloody good cup of coffee.” Alec sniggered and they shared a fleeting smile before sobering again. He busied himself with preparing her coffee, and tried not to get distracted by her, or buried in the memories of their past. Then they had to wait for it to brew.

“You changed me,” he confessed quietly. They were no longer talking about his ignorance of social norms or his refusal to make her a cup of tea. He turned in her arms and she embraced him fully, along with all of his flaws. Alec held her close and wove his fingers through her hair.

“I couldn’t change your mind, though,” she sniffed, tipping her head to look up at him. He cradled her face between his hands and wondered if he should admit how close she was to succeeding. She rested her hand over his heart, splaying her fingers over an organ that physically she couldn’t reach, but she somehow held within her palm.

“I want you to _consider_ coming back,” she echoed her proposal from the night before with a gaze that made his chest ache with the same longing. “That’s all I want from you, Alec. I’m not asking for anything else. _Please_ , just promise me that you’ll _think_ about visiting the boys and me...”

Alec nodded, but didn’t agree or disagree to anything. He would think about it, all the time. And he would consider it over and over again, but one visit would never be enough. He pulled her against him, tucking her head beneath his chin. She listened to the rhythm of his heartbeat and he listened to her breathe until the minutes ticked away from them, and the aroma of coffee was too strong to ignore.

Ellie released him and Alec poured her coffee. Once he’d cleaned up the filter and the spilled coffee grains, Ellie offered him a cup of something steaming that didn’t look or smell like tea. And it was _red_.

“What’s this?”

“It’s decaf,” she replied as he hesitantly accepted it. He hadn’t sifted through the teabags, but he trusted her. It would be a mistake. But he wouldn’t find that out until she was already gone. The mug seared his skin, so he set it aside to cool.

Peeking at his wristwatch, he knew that Ellie had to go if she wanted to get home before Lucy arrived with the boys. She wouldn’t have time to drink her coffee, even if she did prefer it intolerably hot.

“Sorry,” Ellie apologized as their eyes met. “I really should-”

“I know,” Alec said. She placed her mug beside his and retrieved her jacket and boots from the chair. Putting on the orange jacket that wasn’t so abhorrently neon anymore, she sat down to unlace her boots and retie them. He approached her and her fingers fumbled another knot. Alec had knelt down in front of her before he was even aware of it.

“Alec, I can tie my own bloody-”

“Shut up, Miller.” It was such a simple thing that Ellie was more than capable of doing herself, but Alec wanted to do _something_ for her. Normally, a couple would go out for breakfast; or drive or walk the other person home; or arrange for their next date, a real awkward first date, to be at a pricy restaurant where neither one of them liked the food or wine; or plan another somewhat boring activity that ordinary couples were expected to do together. Alec suddenly envied those _people_ because he couldn’t do any of that for Ellie. But he could still do this.

He was on the second boot, when he remembered that Ellie had tied his shoes six days ago in her kitchen, after her wee beastie had stolen one. She’d blamed herself for how fast he’d deteriorated. And that’s when he noticed that she was crying. He laced her boots and tied the knot, but even though his fingers were working steadily, the rest of him was breaking down. Ellie pressed the heels of her shaking hands to her eyes and Alec cupped his hand over his mouth. He had to take several deep breaths before he attempted to get up. He couldn’t do it. Not without her help.

Ellie caught him and Alec was able to stand, using her and the chair. He staggered, but she was there to support him. He fisted his hands in the slippery material of her jacket and her nails dug into his shoulder blades. They clung to each other until they could stand on their own again. Ellie pushed him away, but held him at arm’s length.

“Alec, you’re going to see your daughter today. Maybe you won’t talk to her or be able to work things out right now, but you will _see_ her,” she reassured him.

“What if I don’t?” he blurted out, his voice cracking.

“Then I’ll help you, okay? We’ll do whatever it takes,” she vowed. Smoothing his hair from his forehead, she planted a kiss there. Another tear dripped down her cheek, scalding him too. “And then you’re going to come back to me and the boys. And one day you’ll bring her so that we can meet her too,” she told him, her voice trembling. Alec might’ve been able to imagine it, but he didn’t even _know_ his own daughter anymore. Ellie read it all in his eyes and hugged him tightly.

“I’m going to call you later and then we’ll talk. Alright?” she whispered in his ear, stroking the nape of his neck.

“Alright.” Alec enfolded her in his arms and had an insane impulse to ask her to come with him. But they’d hit that fork in the road and their paths were diverging. They both had hard journeys ahead of them, but today Alec would return to where he thought his would finally _end_.

Ellie released him and roughly swiped at her eyes, heading for the door.

“Ellie, wait.”

She paused. Alec’s mind went blank again at the sight of her face lit by a ray of light, escaping through the blinds. Her eyes glistened and tear tracks gleamed on her cheeks. This was probably the last time he'd ever see her and he didn't know what to say. A thousand things were running through his head, but he’d run out of time.

“You forgot your coffee,” he said. He immediately felt like a bloody idiot, but Ellie came back for it. Alec covered the rim with his hand, sliding the mug out of her reach. “Wait,” he said again, desperate to hang onto her for one more moment. His eyes frantically searched the room, darting from the mackintosh folded over the chair, to his thicker and warmer coat on the floor that she’d worn so many, many times. He grabbed it.

“Here.”

Ellie frowned, but when he offered the coat to her, her bottom lip wobbled and she stifled a sob.

“Take it,” he insisted.

“Alec, I already have one and you – you _stupid_ -” She broke off, her voice failing her like all the words in the Oxford dictionary had failed Alec. He tenderly wrapped her in his coat, draping it over her shoulders and tugging it more closely around her. Despite her feeble protests and the fact that she was already wearing a jacket, she fit her arms through the sleeves.

“It might be cold,” he said, because he was _stupid_ , so stupidly and completely in love with her that he didn’t know how to tell her. Outside the sun was beginning to rise, pouring daylight in through cracks and crevices in the blinds and around the door. Alec could see the light in her tearful eyes and he captured her face between his hands. He futilely wiped the tear tracks with his thumbs, but he was only making it harder for them both. Mentally photographing her one last time, he kissed her forehead and let her go.

He gave her back her coffee and Ellie reminded him that his tea was probably lukewarm by now. They were both fighting tears as Ellie opened the door. The light flooded inside, incinerating the last of their delusions and reducing a fantasy to ashes. They stared at each other in the dawning of a frightening new day.

“I’ll call you later,” Ellie said again, touching his arm. She rubbed her thumb over the scar on the inside of his forearm, a remnant of another fire he’d started in a hotel room, years ago, right after Sandbrook. But while that fire had nearly killed him and had left him burned, broken-hearted and numb; the fire that Ellie had stoked by kissing that burn mark ten days ago had changed him forever. He’d fallen in love again and he’d had over a week with her and her boys to experience what some people never got to feel in a lifetime. The words were right there on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t say them. And it was _killing_ him.

He kissed her cheek instead, tasting the salt of her tears.

“You’ll be alright, Ellie,” he whispered into her hair. His eyes stung and he knew he couldn't keep her any longer or they’d both fall apart. Their gazes locked one last time. Alec memorized the shades and hues of brown in her irises, and the faint creases, crinkles and lines that the broadening daylight etched in her face. She was beautiful and he was mesmerized by her.

“We’ll see each other again, Alec,” she promised with a forced smile. He pressed his quivering lips together and tucked a curl behind her ear.

“See you, Miller,” he croaked.

“It’s _Richardson_ ,” Ellie corrected him, swatting his chest. Alec choked on what could have been a laugh or a sob. And then she took that first step out of the shadows and into a brighter life without him. As he watched her walk away, he knew that he’d see her again, even if it was only in his memories.

*

He shut the door and stared into a room that seemed gutted, now that she was gone and had taken everything with her. She had left one thing for him though. He strode to the side table where he’d set aside the tea. He held it in his hand, wondering if some of the warmth he felt was from her. The tea was definitely tinted red, but Alec took a sip anyway. And instantly spat it out.

“What the bloody hell is this?” he sputtered. It was the _worst_ tea he’d ever had in his entire life. And that included the unknown one that Ellie had ordered him at the coffee shop, months ago, along with other awful experiments he’d made with variations of decaf.

Alec scraped his knuckles over his mouth and spotted the package on the side table. It was a suspicious shade of fuchsia. He picked up the packet and squinted at the familiar purple writing, boasting of the herbal tea’s mystical healing powers.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

It was the same “magical” tea that Ellie had at her house, at the bottom of a jar of leftover teabags that didn’t appeal to anyone. She’d done that on purpose to be funny, because he’d said it looked poisonous, deliberately avoiding a conversation about a pacemaker that might’ve saved his life then. And the teabag came complete with a little tag with a cheesy silly “proverb” on it that was supposed to sound sage, but only made the company and the consumers more ridiculous. Alec read the absurd quote and a chill ran down his spine.

Switching on the lamp, he returned with his glasses to examine the tea spattered square more closely.

_You’re not a setting sun, your story’s not done._

Alec removed his spectacles, but continued to stare at the tag as if it was toxic. He’d never put stock in something as stupid as that, but his daughter was, or had been, an entirely different story. He hesitantly touched the tea stained words, remembering the last New Year’s Eve he’d rang in with his daughter, because Vicky had been “working”. It had been over three years ago, but it was one of the most recent and happiest memories he had of Keira. They’d stayed up together, making fun of the terrible entertainment and awful performances, and talking in depth about school, her friends and her life for one of the last times ever.

The memory came back to him because he’d gotten Chinese, and for whatever reason they’d wound up with too many fortune cookies. Keira had gone through them one at a time, trying to make sense of the fragmented nonsensical sayings that a printer had spat out at random. Alec had listened and watched, amused. She'd saved one and forced him to open it. Alec would never forget his fortune, because he’d mocked it and made her laugh until she cried. It was one of the best and last nights he had with her and every single detail of that treasured memory was still crystal clear.

He was certain that the “fortune” he’d gotten that night had been the same as the quote on the teabag. Alec stared at it for a long moment, wondering if it was a foreshadowing of how his meeting with his daughter would go. He berated himself for being so daft. Throwing out the teabag, he dumped the “mystical” purple tea down the drain.

Ellie had attempted to poison him again, but she’d also helped him pull himself together by thinking about something else. He would’ve been a wreck if it hadn’t been for that tiny distraction. He managed to shower, shave, and dress himself in another ironed suit and tie that Ellie claimed he wore like layered armor. Alec sincerely hoped she was right. He could use a few extra walls to protect himself from whatever hatred his daughter was going to hurl at him today.

He hurriedly packed up the room and was ready to go with five minutes to spare. He almost forgot about it, but at the last second he turned to the desk where he had spent so much time trying to tell his daughter _everything_.

The letter he’d written for Keira wasn't there. It wasn't in his mackintosh, or in his bag, or in any of the pockets, or drawers, or in any of the places where it might've fallen in the turmoil of the storm they'd dragged into his hotel room last night. Alec emptied everything, turned the room upside down, and went through another two pills; but the letter had vanished. He was going to be late if he delayed himself any longer. The room was a complete mess, but there wasn't enough time to clean up the damage and there was only so much that he could do. Alec snuck out the back entrance and met the car further up the road. Broadchurch faded away as he closed his eyes and drifted off; shutting out the view of the small coastal town where he’d left half of his heart, for the very last time.

*

Alec was fifteen minutes late for the lunch Vicky had arranged for them. It wasn't entirely his fault. Vicky and Keira had gotten out of the appointment early. Vicky had also texted him that they had to leave earlier to get Keira back to school in time for an exam. He would've been on time if he hadn't searched the whole bloody room for that letter. And the driver had been way too cautious, driving well under the speed limit, stopping at lights, and stretching out the ride at least another twenty minutes. Alec almost didn’t pay him.

He'd made the driver drop him off too soon, and he had to walk another block before he reached the ridiculously fancy cafe Vicky had chosen. Resting against the side of the building adjoining it, he tried to catch his breath and compose himself. It didn't make much of a difference. He caught a glimpse of his reflection as he staggered inside and cringed. He spotted his ex-wife immediately.

She was at a table in the corner with two cups of coffee. Alec’s heart leapt into his throat and he nearly knocked over a pink-haired teenager in his haste to reach the table.

" _Bastard_ ," the girl snarled at him, under her breath. Something about that one word made him freeze. He turned around to apologize, but the girl was already out the door, slinging her book bag over her shoulder and racing across the street.

Alec faced his ex-wife and was met with a glare that she hadn't aimed at him in years. There was a time when it would've intimidated him, but now it annoyed him.

"You’re a half hour late," she pointed out, shoving her empty coffee cup aside. Alec saw that the second one had been finished as well.

"Where's Keira?" Alec asked and touched the lipstick stained coffee cup that had to be hers. Vicky flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder, shaking her head.

"Keira left, Alec. She has an exam that she can't miss," Vicky explained, instantly crushing him. He must've just missed her. Alec’s flickering hope was stamped out but his rising temper couldn’t be quenched as effortlessly. The fact that Vicky was clearly pissed off at him was fuelling the fire.

"You could've told me earlier that you were changing the time," he snapped, taking the vacated seat.

"You still would've been late, like always."

"I told you I was coming up from Dorset." Their voices were rising steadily as they resumed a row that had been left on the back burner for over three years.

"It wouldn't have made a difference-"

"It would've made a world of a difference. Vicky, I _need_ to see her!"

"You just did!" Vicky announced to the quiet cafe. Alec’s heart skipped a beat and almost stalled in his chest. Keira had been the teenaged girl with the pink hair who had called him a bastard after he’d nearly knocked her over. She hadn’t let him apologize to her or even _look_ at her, before she’d dashed off with only a passing snarl. Alec was floored and devastated by how _close_ he'd come to meeting her, and how she'd only confirmed the fear that she still hated him.

"You didn't even recognize your own daughter," Vicky sneered, "And you show up out of breath, looking like you're a drug addict and you rolled out of someone else's bed this morning."

All of the blood rushed into his face and his hands clenched. He wasn't sure which of her observations hurt him more, because she was so dangerously near the truth that it was somehow both ironic and excruciating.  

"Oh, my god, you did," Vicky hissed. "That’s why you were late."

"That's not why I was late," he protested, but his skin was heated and flushed with embarrassment and anger.

"Alec, you've got a love bite on your neck and I slept with you long enough to know when you've-"

Alec lost it.

" _Seriously_?” he scoffed and then he exploded. “You're going to fucking lecture _me_ about _that_? Are you listening to yourself?" he snarled and leaned halfway across the table. He was so far gone that he didn't bother checking his temper or lowering his voice. "Do you need me to remind you what happened when _you_ had sex instead of doing your bloody job?" Vicky blanched and made a shushing noise, but Alec kept going, "Do I need to remind you that the only reason why I haven't seen _my_ daughter or even _talked_ to my own daughter in almost two _years_ is because I lied, and told everyone that _I_ had the affair, and that _I_ was stupid enough to throw away _everything_ that I _loved_ and _cared_ about for a fucking _shag_?!"

Vicky had shrunk in on herself, but now she was saying something. Alec was breathing so hard that he couldn't hear her over the sound of his own pulse slamming in his ears.

"Alec, calm down!" She hushed him and covered his hand with hers. Alec couldn't feel the touch of the hand that he'd longed for in the dark months that had followed the collapse of the Sandbrook case, and the fallout that _she_ had caused.

"Alec, stop-"

"No, you listen to me," he growled, barely hanging on as his heart beat harder in his chest, and his breath got more ragged. "I took the fall for you because I loved you and our daughter. And I forgave you because I loved you and our daughter. It was _my_ decision and I did it because I _love_ Keira. But I will _never_ forgive you for making her _hate_ me, and making her think that I didn't love her enough to stay." He was probably slurring his words. He was too close to the edge. His fingers instinctively wrenched his hand free from hers and sought out the pills. He took two before he was even conscious of the action, or the way his heart was pounding, or the way Vicky, and her voice, and her painfully familiar touch kept fading in and out.

"ALEC!"

Alec opened his eyes and looked at the woman that had been his partner for fourteen years. She'd given him the one person he loved more than anything in the world, and he could hate her for taking that person away from him, but she'd given him some of the best years of his life by giving birth to their daughter. He would always love her for that, and he knew that Keira had been better off with her, in spite of all that it had cost him.

"Are you alright?" Vicky interrogated him, forcefully slicking his hair back from his sweaty forehead. He thought of a pair of softer, gentler hands that had repeated the same motion with an amount of tenderness that he hadn't realized he'd been lacking and missing for so long. “Alec?” He grunted in reply, but Vicky bent his head back so that she could examine him.

“Jesus, Alec,” she whispered, scanning his haggard face and recoiling from him. She nervously flexed her fingers and then groped for her handbag. “I’m sorry,” she apologized to him, “But there’s something I need to-” Alec seized her wrist. 

“Please, Vicky,” he desperately appealed to her one _last_ time, swallowing his pride and searching those anxious blue eyes for a glimmer of a hope that was dying a slow death. “Just one more time. I’m only asking for one bloody minute with her-”

“She won’t listen!” Vicky didn’t have to say anything more. There was a sickening amount of pity in her gaze and Alec knew that Keira despised him too much now for an intervention. He gave up the fight.

"Well, go on,” he sneered and slapped his palm on the table. “Go tell our daughter what a _bastard_ I am. You can add this to the list of reasons why she should hate me," Alec spat and tossed the empty blister pack at her. Vicky stared at him, wide-eyed and frightened.

"Alec, you don’t understand-”

"Go away, Vicky," he ordered her, glowering. For once in her life, she obeyed him.

He sat there with his head in his hands and eventually bought a cup of decaf tea, so the employees would stop glaring at him. Fortunately, at this hour and with this price range there were very few people. He wanted to leave, but he felt sick, and he couldn't blame it entirely on his heart condition.

His phone rang and Alec picked up without looking at the caller ID.

"What?"

" _Would it kill you to try a hello?_ " Ellie snapped. Alec sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

"What do you want Ellie?" He was being rude, but he was upset with himself, his ex, and the unfairness of the world, and that included Ellie.

" _You didn't see your daughter._ " Ellie didn't need to ask.

"No." Alec expelled another breath. "I was too late."

Ellie hesitated and then put two and two together.

" _I'm sorry, Alec._ "

"She walked right by me and I didn't even recognize my own daughter," he went on, his voice quivering with the emotions still boiling inside of him. "She called me a bastard and ran off. Vicky railed at me for not recognizing her and being late. And then she had the _nerve_ to accuse me of putting a bloody shag over seeing my own daughter, for the first time in _years_ -" He stopped in mid-sentence, realizing what he'd said to her while he was ranting.

"Shit." He cursed himself. "Ellie, I didn't mean that."

" _No, you're right,_ " Ellie sighed.

"Lucy?" He pinched the bridge of his nose. Ellie didn't need to say anything. He could only imagine how _that_ had gone down.

"The timing-"

" _Maybe, we shouldn't have-_ "

"It was a mistake," Alec blurted out. There was another gaping silence on the other end. "I took advantage of you-"

" _Alec, if anyone took advantage it was me. You're ill and I wanted something that I shouldn't have asked of you..._ " They were both right on some level. Their relationship had been screwed up from the start because of the circumstances. And the whole thing was a mess. Alec needed to let go before he held her back from something that she deserved, and Ellie needed to move on without him.

" _Are you alright?_ " Ellie asked softly.

"Spectacular," he retorted.

" _Is there any way you could see your daughter without involving Vicky? I could drive you. I don't start my job for another week and we've already boxed up most of the stuff,_ " she said in a rush. “ _As long as Hurricane Fred doesn’t rip through the house on another destruction binge we should be done-_ ”

"No, Ellie," Alec interrupted her before she could say anything more about Keira or wee Fred. If she tried to put him on the phone again, he was going to hang up on her, because he couldn’t do this. Not today. He was hurting her, but it was necessary. "Ellie, you know that we can't do this." He’d said it before, but this time it _destroyed_ him.

Ellie fell silent on the other end, but Alec knew she was crying again by the occasional sniff. They'd talked about it in the cemetery and at the Traders, but what happened last night wouldn't change anything. A harsher reality had struck them as soon as they’d left the safety of his hotel room. And there was nothing they could do to escape it.

"I wanted it," Alec confessed, "I wanted all of it: you, those two boys, even that stupid cottage in that stupid town, and those death trap cliffs, and that dangerous ocean. Hell, I even would've put up with your sister if I thought I could make you happy..." He faltered and Ellie tried to suppress a sob.

" _Now I know you're lying,_ " she said, with a wet laugh. " _You'd never be able to deal with Lucy if we'd-_ " She broke off again, and Alec almost upset the teacup as he buried his head in his hand.

"I would've done it for you," he told her honestly. "If that's what you wanted, and I thought that I could be there for you and for them in the way you wanted me to be."

" _I want you here and it doesn't matter if you're ill-_ "

"Yes, it does," Alec cut her off. He tipped the untouched tea toward him, imagining that he could see a reflection in it of himself and the skeleton that he was becoming. Ellie was crying outright now, and the surface of Alec's tea rippled as a tear of his own fell. He watched the little rings that formed; a constant reminder that even the smallest things had huge repercussions that one never realized until it was too late and the damage was done. There was no one to blame but himself for reaching for her on that bloody bench. He’d thought he could save her, but he'd only been dragging her down into the riptide of his own ocean. And now he needed her to move on or he’d drown her in the overpowering current of his growing instability and frailty.

"I'm sorry, Ellie," he apologized. "You take care of yourself and those two boys."

Ellie was crying too much to reply.

"If you need anything you can call me, alright? And I'll-I'll do whatever I can to help you and if I can't-"

Ellie told him to stop and Alec squeezed his burning eyes shut.

"Ellie, this is important, I need you to move on and to remember that I - that number I gave you - I'm going to make sure that someone's there to take care of you - if you ever need it and I -" He couldn't say it. Alec hung up and almost put his elbow into the tea. He dragged his hands down his tearstained face and scrubbed away the evidence of his broken heart, but it was still there like a visible scar.

Alec got up and left the café, trying to pretend that he was leaving all that baggage behind too. He walked until he found the spot where he'd first learned he was running out of time. It was early, but he didn't know where else to go, or if he would even make it there.

The iron chair legs scraped across the stone patio, and the table shook with the weight of the person sitting across from him. Alec shuddered beneath a gaze that held so much sympathy that it was tangible.

"I thought you weren't coming back, thought you might stay in Broadchurch with your bonny lass Lucy,” Marty’s accent was as familiar to him as his own, carrying three decades of a shared history that still paled in comparison to what Alec had shared with Ellie over the course of eleven short months. 

"Lucy hates me. She wanted me to leave," Alec said gloomily. He focused on the curling, swirling pattern of the wrought iron table that was the only thing keeping him from falling and crumbling, right there in front of Iris’ nephew and the tormentor of his childhood, and the one person that could try to _physically_ make his death as painless as possible.

"Are you ready?" Ellie had asked him that too, but his answer had changed along with everything else. Alec lifted his heavy head and finally looked Marty in the eye. "Yeah," he said, caving and giving up another part of the fight.

"I'm ready to go home."

Marty hesitated and scrutinized him, but Alec was _done_.

"Take me home.”

Marty nodded and stood. He held out his hand to Alec and helped him to his feet. Alec swayed and grasped at his arm, but after a moment it passed just like it always did. It wouldn't stop happening, but it wouldn't finish him off. Not yet.

"Come on," Marty said, collecting his belongings. Alec followed him to the car.

Alec collapsed in the passenger seat and closed his eyes. He didn’t remember the drive home. He was distracted by a box full of memories that he’d never be able to shove to the back of his mind. The car stopped, and Marty had to open the passenger door for him before he realized that they'd arrived. Alec got out and looked up at the familiar white house, looming over him. Marty bounded up the steps, but the door opened before he reached it. Iris stood there at the top of the stairs, waiting for him. He climbed the steps and bent his head to peck her on the cheek.

"You're home," Iris whispered, cupping his face between her wrinkled hands. Tears glittered in her grey eyes and Alec caught her wrists.

"Sorry, I'm late," Alec said like he'd said a million times before, since the day she took him in at the age of nine. She'd taken in that boy and turned him into a man who Alec wished she could still be proud of.

"It's alright, Alec," she reassured him, stroking his cheeks, and brushing back his hair in a rare tactile gesture of tenderness that she hadn't indulged in since he was a boy. It wasn't alright. Alec couldn't handle it. He gently removed her wrists and passed by her into the house.

He didn't know where Marty went with his luggage and he didn't care. As soon as he stepped over that threshold he was assaulted by an arsenal of memories, most of them from a time when he had a daughter and a wife who loved him, and Iris had a reason to be proud of him. Iris followed him into the house and closed the door behind him. She was saying something about dinner, oblivious or trying to set him at ease. Alec spun around, terrified. The idea that he was going to die there slammed into him full force. Iris was in the way and Alec almost ploughed into her.

"Alec, what's the matter?" she asked anxiously, afraid of him. "Alec what's wrong?" Her voice was getting further and further away. Alec wasn't able to get by her because his legs had given out on him. Suddenly, he was on the floor of the foyer. Iris stooped down, calling to Marty, and asking him over and over again if he was alright, and what she could do to make it better.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he gasped, and then he was sobbing.

"Oh, _darling_ ," Iris whispered. And then her arms were encircling him, and she was holding his head against her breast as if he was a child again. Alec broke down and wept right there on the floor of the foyer, in front of Marty and safe within Iris' arms. He didn't deserve her forgiveness, but he clung to her like he'd clung to Ellie, when he had to let her go. Iris was the end of the road and the only thing he had left. He was going to die and she would be the one there with him. He was sorry, so sorry that it had come to this, and he was so fucking scared that this was happening. He'd never get to say goodbye to Keira or Ellie because he was a bloody coward. He'd never see those two girls from Sandbrook get justice; he’d never see Ellie create a new life for her and her boys and rediscover the happiness he knew she was so close to finding; and he'd never see his daughter grow up or get married or have children - He stopped thinking after that and became conscious of nothing other than Iris; warm and familiar and ready to protect him from everything, even though she couldn't.

And he _broke_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost named this chapter the Shitstorm. I wrote the first chapter and my “last” chapter 950 days ago, complete with Alec’s letter, Iris’ house and a VERY different goodbye between Alec and Ellie. I planned on hitting the scene eventually, but then I lost someone and everything changed. Obviously, this isn’t the last chapter and the story’s not done. I’m so sorry that you guys are suffering through this along with me, and I want to thank all of you, even if you only read the first chapter, you made a difference.


	37. Escaping the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter’s should’ve been cut but I’m too upset. THANK YOU TO NANNYOGG123/MYKELARA for finding ALL the stupid mistakes I made and always putting up with me, and PGILMOUR75 for taking the time out of her crazy schedule to find even MORE stupid mistakes. And THANK YOU to those of you still reading that left kudos/comments/reviews. 
> 
> EOW 4.18.13. I never thought that either of you would die that young.

For Alec, the days passed slowly, one day blurring into another one.

For Ellie, the days flew by, and there was never enough time.

Fred's grandmother took one look at the damage Fred was capable of doing, and insisted on taking Fred for the week. Ellie was so grateful that she hugged her, and Anne laughed. With Fred no longer underfoot, Ellie could finally finish what she'd started a couple of weeks ago with Alec. She tried not to think of Alec with his shirt sleeves rolled up, his hair sticking up in all directions and his face flushed from the heat and the physical exertion; arguing with her over music; laughing because she didn't know what the mysterious object was in the back of her cupboard that turned out to be some sort of fancy blender; kissing her until she forgot that she was upset with him for dropping a heavy box that she told him not to pick up. She had memories of him plastered all over the walls of the ugly cottage that had never become home. She almost broke down when she saw the empty bedroom. But she didn't. Together with Lucy, Ollie and Tom, they packed up everything in two days and transported it to the new house in Edgewood. And Ellie foolishly hoped that she could move on as easily.

Her new job was another welcome distraction, but Alec was there too. On her first day, DI Worthington reminded her again that it was Alec's recommendation that had made Worthington's decision to hire her. She bluntly told Ellie not to make her regret it.

As soon as her first shift ended, Ellie took out her phone and called Alec for the first time since he'd left Broadchurch.

He didn't pick up, but he rang her back later.

" _What's the matter_?" he asked, obviously alarmed.

"Nothing," Ellie assured him.

" _Do you need something_?"

"No."

" _Then why are you calling_?" Alec sounded puzzled. Ellie suddenly realized that the only times she'd ever _called_ Alec was when she needed or wanted something from him. She'd made up plenty of excuses to talk to him, but ultimately it came down to a selfish need, even if it was merely to keep the loneliness at bay.

"Today was my first day and I wanted to-" Ellie halted because Alec was coughing. "Are you alright?"

"' _m fine_."

"Alec, are you really alright?" Ellie asked, her heart aching. She wanted so badly to be able to _see_ him. Talking through a mobile wasn't enough for her.

" _Just tired_ ," Alec replied and she could hear the weariness in his voice. " _How'd it go_?"

Ellie started talking and she couldn't stop. She told him about Worthington, and the new people she'd met, and the new house, and Ollie flirting with the pretty next door neighbor, and Tom almost breaking the other next door neighbor's window with a football. And she told him about Fred and his explorations of the new house and his fort of empty boxes. Alec had always been quiet, but he seemed quieter tonight and distant. He still asked all the right questions and chuckled in all the right places. She'd missed him so much in that short span of time, but the second coughing fit reminded her that it was going to get worse, and he'd continue to get further and further away from her.

" _Sorry_ ," he apologized, when it petered out. " _Keep going_ ," he yawned.

"Am I keeping you up?" Ellie queried, eyeing the clock over the stove. It was only half past seven.

" _No_ ," Alec lied.

"I'll let you go," Ellie said. "You should get some rest-"

" _No_." There was an edge to his voice. " _Keep talking_."

Ellie's mind went blank. She couldn't focus on anything other than the raggedness of Alec's breath. She hadn't noticed he'd been steadily getting worse, because she'd been chattering so much.

"Alec-"

" _Ellie, please_ ," Alec pleaded with her. " _Go on_." Ellie heard a frightening wheeze on the other end that she didn't like.

"Alec, go take your medication," she urged him.

" _I already did_." Ellie's blood froze, because Alec had told her the same thing after he had an attack on the bench outside of the restaurant. The drugs weren't working.

"Alec, go get Iris and make her take you to A&E, or I will get in the car right now and break every single fucking traffic law to get to you. I'll kill you myself if you don't make it to the hospital-"

Alec barked a laugh that sounded more like a gasp. The spasm was worse this time, but shorter because he was so breathless.

"' _s not that bad_ ," he assured her. " _Besides they told me I was fine_." Ellie felt the iciness in her blood, reaching all the extremities of her body.

"You – you went to the hospital?" she stammered.

" _This morning_ ," Alec admitted.

"And you didn't _tell_ me?" Her voice was shrill and her panic went unchecked.

" _Why would I tell you_?"

"Why wouldn't you?" she snapped. "I _care_ about you and I _worry_ about you all the time-"

" _Then stop because I'm not going to call you every bloody time I black out_ -"

"I can't turn it off," she snarled. "I know you thought that you could sleep with me and leave, and then I'd move on and completely stop thinking about you. But that's not how it works for a human being with a heart-"

" _Maybe that's why mine's failing, because I didn't really have one to begin with_ ," Alec interrupted her, harshly. " _I never would've slept with you if I knew that you'd badger me for the rest of my life. I didn't even_ want _to_ -"

Ellie hung up on him. He called and texted her several times, but she ignored all of them. A couple of days later, he showed up at her work, looking like a shell of his former self. Ellie was tempted to walk right past him, but he was clever enough to show up when everyone was at their desks and to pretend that he was there to visit her boss. DI Worthington was thrilled.

"Richardson, your old DI's already checking up on you." Worthington clearly had no idea that Alec had more than a professional relationship with her. With Alec's inept social skills, it was sometimes hard to fathom him having a personal relationship with anyone. "I'm sure it's been a long time. Why don't you two catch up?" Worthington's mobile went off so she missed the significant look that passed between Alec and Ellie. She excused herself and then closed the door to her office, leaving them awkwardly standing in the middle of the busy CID.

"Can I buy you a coffee?" Alec asked hesitantly after a long silence. He was clean-shaven and dressed in a suit and tie again, but he looked so different from the man that had been her boss. He wasn't even the same man that she'd seen less than two weeks ago.

"Fine."

Ellie didn't want to create a scene, so she restrained herself from glaring at him, slapping him, kicking him in the balls or snogging him senseless. They walked out together into the grey muggy afternoon of another sticky day. The IT guy grinned and waved at Ellie, and Alec waited until he went inside the station before he apologized.

"I'm sorry."

"You should be," Ellie told him, even though Alec looked so miserable that it was hard to stay mad at him. He shoved his hands into his pockets and bowed his head. They strolled toward the coffee shop up the road. Ellie wanted to loop her arm through his, but she was too upset. It wasn't about Alec's slip of the tongue; it was about the unfairness of it all. She was angry that she was losing him and angrier that Alec was determined to disappear.

"I'm surprised you got your head out of your arse and came out of exile," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I needed to talk to Worthington," he lied, tugging at his ear.

"That's bullshit." Ellie glowered at him as they paused in front of the coffee shop. "You only wanted to see me," she accused him.

"Of course I wanted to see you. That's the bloody problem, Ellie," he snapped and raked his fingers through his overgrown mane. "I shouldnae be here. You're rebuilding your life and I'm ending mine-"

"Stop talking like that!" she interrupted him.

"It's the bloody truth!" he spat. "For god's sake, Ellie, why can't you see it?" he hissed through clenched teeth. "I'm on so many drugs now that I don't know what day of the week it is, and I'm _still_ blacking out and taking it out on you." Ellie was momentarily stunned and Alec swore under his breath. He rubbed the shadows beneath his tired eyes and propped his hands on his hips.

"I'm sorry," he apologized to the pavement between them. "I came here to apologize and to try to make it up to you," he said, lifting his head to look at her. "But we can't keep dragging _this_ out. This has to be the _last_ time."

"We'll see about that…" Ellie challenged him to fight her on it. Alec frowned, but he was too tired to argue with her.

"Do you want coffee or not?'

He opened the door for her and she swept past him. He wouldn't let her order for him or even think about paying. Ellie smirked, knowing that he must've drunk the fuchsia tea she'd made for him at the Traders. They sat down on the bench out front. After several minutes of silence, the tension became unbearable for Ellie.

"This is the worst date I've ever been on," Ellie informed him. Alec stared at her and then put down his tea. Reaching into his suit jacket, he pulled out something that fit within his fist.

"Hold out your hand," he urged her. Ellie did and Alec pressed something soft and fragrant into her palm.

It was a rose.

"Had to snap off the stem or Worthington would've noticed..." he explained. "But it reminded me of you."

The rose was orange, her favorite color, but the tips of the petals were the same shade of pink as the last flower he'd "wooed" her with by ripping it out of someone's garden. The blend of the two colors reminded her of a sunset or a sunrise. It was one of the prettiest flowers she'd ever received. And that was a high compliment, because despite turning out to be a monster, Joe had been very good at picking out flowers, when he remembered.

"Did you steal this too?" Ellie asked with a lump in her throat.

"No." Ellie looked up at him. His eyes seemed so much larger and emptier in his haggard face, but there was the tiniest hint of a spark. "I didn't have wee Fred to use as an excuse to raid a garden, so I actually had to buy one," he complained. Ellie laughed and Alec's lips curved into the ghost of a smile. She kissed his cheek.

"Thank you."

"I didn't want you to think that - that I didn't care," he stuttered as their eyes locked. "I wanted to take you on a date. I'm not a heartless person. I still have a heart," he reminded her. "But I don't want you to be there when it stops."

"I know," she said, even though she didn't agree with him. Alec stretched out his arm across the bench behind her. Ellie gradually leaned into him, until her head was on his chest and his arm was curled around her shoulders.

They sat there together beneath that grey sky without saying anything at all. It was a hot day, and Ellie was fatigued from all the lifting and running around she'd done over the past week. Alec smelled of rose petals and a soap that wasn't from a hotel, but still familiar enough to lull her into a false sense of security.

"Worthington's probably wondering where you are," Alec murmured, kissing her head.

"We've got nine months to catch up on."

He chuckled. Worthington obviously had no idea that they'd kept in touch until they couldn't go weeks or days without seeing each other.

"She'll kill me if she ever finds out," Alec sighed.

"I don't think that's something you have to worry about," Ellie pointed out and rested her palm over his ailing heart. "Your secret's safe with me." Her voice trembled and she clenched the rose in her fingers. Taking a deep breath, she added, "Besides, I'm a bloody good detective. I'll prove to her that I could've gotten the job without you."

"Yes, you are and you will," he agreed. Ellie knew that he wasn't just flattering her. Alec had faith in her and had realized what she was capable of, long before she knew it herself. "I'm proud of you," he whispered. Ellie blushed but the heat stayed there, burning behind her eyelids.

"You need to go back to work," he mumbled into her hair, but made no move to get up or release her. They'd gotten closer, too close for someone that was worried about favoritism and professionalism, but Ellie didn't give a damn. She would've stayed there on that bench within the circle of his arms for the rest of his life if he'd let her.

To their surprise, Alec's mobile rang first.

"It's Worthington," he surmised.

"Don't answer it," Ellie pleaded with him.

"Ellie," Alec groaned, "It's only your third day at your new job."

"And you're _here_ ," she whispered, her voice breaking.

"You can't skive off work," Alec chided her, his voice sharpening. He let go of her and Ellie sat up beside him.

"If you're going to die on me then I want to spend as much time with you as possible," Ellie told him fiercely.

"And I don't want you to put your life on hold for me," Alec retorted. They glared at each other and he answered his phone.

"Hardy. Yeah, I'm still with her," Alec said to Worthington without taking his eyes off of Ellie. "We had a lot to catch up on," Alec explained. Ellie snorted and Alec held a finger to his lips. She couldn't hear Worthington but Alec's gaze had softened. "Do you need her back now?" he inquired and absentmindedly adjusted one of the hairpins restraining her curls. "Well, I was – I was going to brief her on Sandbrook," Alec lied and touched another hairpin on the opposite side of her head. "No, I think she deserves the whole story. And I don't think we'll be seeing each other again…" He tapered off and Ellie's breath hitched. Worthington's reply was lost in the static as Alec gently removed the metal hairpin that had been digging into her scalp. It fell between the slats of the bench as he unleashed some of her ringlets and rubbed away the sting with his thumb.

"Okay. Thanks, Worthington." Alec looked away from Ellie, ending the call and tucking the phone into his pocket.

"Come on," he said and got up from the bench. Ellie sighed and they walked back to the station together. It wasn't very far and Ellie dragged her feet the whole way. Alec stopped her right before they reached the building.

"What do you want to do?" he asked, shyly.

Ellie was perplexed until Alec interlaced his fingers with hers.

"I've got a lot to tell you about Sandbrook…" He lifted his brows and waited for her to catch up with him.

"How much time is that going to take?" Ellie wondered, glancing around and nudging him toward the employee parking lot.

"Oh, I expect it's going to take a while," Alec predicted and added, "And Worthington has an appointment so she won't be back for the day…"

Ellie stopped dead in her tracks and Alec's lips twitched.

"I'm under strict orders to keep you for the rest of the day," he said, squeezing her fingers. Ellie towed him to her car and ordered him to get in.

"Ellie, this is it," he warned her as she put the key in the ignition. "After today we can't-"

"Fine," Ellie dismissed him. She was wearing him down bit by bit, but Ellie was well aware that Alec would have to leave eventually. She didn't like to think about that, so she didn't. Not today.

Ellie was so distracted by Alec that she took the wrong turn. By the time she noticed it, they were hopelessly lost. Alec was the one who figured it out. When he discovered that he was right, he teased her mercilessly. Ellie finally pulled the car over and told him to shut up.

She didn't know where they were, but she didn't care. She reached over the console and grabbed him by the lapels of his suit jacket

"You're _mine_ ," she told him and then she gave him a kiss to prove it. Alec was breathing too hard for her to take them where she wanted to go. But the message had been understood.

"Trust me, Ellie, I'm not straying," he chuckled and coughed, leaning back against the passenger seat with his eyes closed.

"You might meet an attractive nurse…" she hedged. Alec snorted and loosened the knot in his tie. Opening his eyes, he rolled his head to look at her.

"You might meet someone too," he probed, studying her. "Maybe you've already met him…" He'd said that to her before, when she was "dating" Geoffrey. Ellie wasn't even sure she would call it that because she'd been too overwhelmed by her growing attraction to Alec, and it had been Lucy's interference and encouragement anyway.

"Who knows," Alec said, shrugging. "Maybe you and Dirty Brian-"

"God, no," Ellie groaned and Alec sniggered. He sobered quickly though.

"I mean it, Ellie," he told her, clasping her arm. "I want you to move on." The air was too heavy and suffocating in the tiny vehicle and they were both aware of the clock on the dashboard, even if the car was currently off. "I don't want the night at the Traders or today to be a mistake," he said, searching her face. "I don't want you hanging onto something that's already dead, and I don't want you dropping everything for me."

Ellie surged forward and kissed him. Alec was silenced and trapped in the small Toyota with her, but he wasn't complaining. Far from it. She got the blasted noose off his neck and he tore all the pins out of her hair. The console was an annoying barrier between them and Ellie got out of the car.

"Where are you going?" Alec asked, gasping. Ellie slammed the door shut and went around the vehicle. He opened his door, but Ellie shoved him back inside and got in with him.

"What are you – _oh_." Alec was a lot more cooperative when he figured out what she was doing. It was too cramped, but they adjusted the seat, and Ellie had just enough room to straddle him and snog him senseless. Alec's cough kicked in before she could forget herself, and push him further than his heart would allow. Ellie was forced to crawl out of the car and hunt for the bottled water in her purse. Alec didn't let her see the pills, but she knew that he took them.

Once he'd caught his breath, they decided to keep driving. Ellie spotted signs for a park that one of the other parents at Tom's tryouts for the football team had mentioned, and Alec liked the idea. They pulled into the empty parking lot and got out. The sky was overcast, but it didn't look like it was going to rain anytime soon. Besides, they weren't going very far. Alec couldn't.

There were little wooden signs advertising a couple of hiking trails through the woods, but they wouldn't be going down any of those paths. They barely made it to the main clearing where there was a weathered picnic table that was missing a bench. The tabletop was filled with carvings of hearts and initials of young lovers that hadn't had been broken yet. Alec planted his hand on the splintered wood and winced when a piece got stuck in his palm.

"I think I'm dying," he quipped, when she insisted on fussing over it.

"That's not funny," Ellie snarled and ripped the splinter out of his skin with more force than was necessary.

" _Blimey_!" Alec hissed and cradled his hand to his chest. "Thank god you're not going to be my caretaker."

Ellie punched him in the arm.

" _Ow_!"

"You're such an insensitive fuckwit," she cursed him and stormed off toward the lake that was within sight of the picnic table.

She kept walking until she reached the water. It was a muddy murky brown, still swollen with all the rain they'd gotten in the aftermath of the heatwave. The lake was so different from the ocean she loved; so small and insignificant in comparison to that endless Atlantic. Ellie imagined that it was less than a mile to the opposite shore. In a few weeks the place would be crawling with tourists and outdoor enthusiasts. But today it was deserted and it was just her and Alec.

Ellie kicked pebbles into the water until the idiot finally joined her, trudging down the gravelly bank to meet her. She was sorely tempted to kick him too, but he already looked like he'd taken a beating. Ellie had enjoyed tousling his hair, rumpling and wrinkling his pressed suit, and tearing off his tie and the top two buttons of his Oxford. But Alec had been beaten down by forces greater than her and the untouchable shadows beneath his eyes were darkening.

"I used to take my daughter to a place like this," he said, crouching beside her and sifting through the pebbles by their feet. He selected a smooth, flat stone and examined it. "I taught her how to skip rocks." Standing, he skipped it neatly across the water multiple times. They gazed out at the water and the widening ripples he'd created with one small stone. A sudden gust of wind disturbed the surface and the rings were lost amongst the new waves that formed in the wake of something stronger.

"It's nice here," Alec remarked and stooped to scoop up another rock.

"It is pretty," Ellie conceded. And the scenery was _pretty_ ; but Ellie had grown up on a beach, and her heart would always be there amongst the sand, and the cliffs and the roar of the waves.

"You miss Broadchurch already," Alec observed, squinting at her. Ellie looked at him as he passed the pebble from one hand to the other. She was well aware of his fear of the water, but apparently that phobia didn't include lakes. He seemed more at home here in this environment and seemed to be aware of the fact that she wasn't. Once again, Ellie was reminded of how they were such different people, or at least they had been before someone they loved and trusted had broken them.

"Do you like Edgewood?" he asked.

"It's nice," Ellie said truthfully. "But it's not _home_. Not yet." Ellie wondered if it would ever be home, or if it would be like that cottage that had sometimes been so empty, and hollow, and echoing with ghosts that she hadn't been able to leave behind in the happy home she'd shared with Joe. Other times the place had rang with laughter and most of her happiest memories there had involved her boys and Alec. Ellie thought of the small table with four chairs, and the chair that had become and perhaps always would be Alec's, long after he was gone.

"Do you want to see the house?" Ellie didn't know how far they were from it or how much time they had left, but Alec shook his head. It was like he knew that as soon as he stepped over that threshold, he'd contaminate it with his presence. She'd never be able to forget him, if he left even one footprint on that shining hardwood floor. And yet Ellie was willing to take that risk and longing to take him home with her.

"Oh, come on, Alec," she whined, "The boys will be home in a couple of hours and we can-"

Alec flung the rock into the water and it disappeared with a splash, much further than she would've expected from a man that was terminal. His chest heaved and he turned to her. Ellie saw the answer in his eyes.

"I already said goodbye to them," he said.

But he hadn't said goodbye to her. Ellie dropped the subject because she didn't want to hear it. The confession and the unspoken words drained him. He slumped down on a flat rock by the lake and Ellie squeezed in beside him.

"Do you want to talk about Sandbrook?" she finally asked.

"I was lying," he reminded her. His fingers tiptoed up her spine as if he'd already memorized where the vertebrae were.

"I know that, Alec," she said. "But I wasn't sure if you wanted to talk…?"

Alec's fingertips paused at the collar of her blouse.

"You've got the file," he pointed out. "But Ellie, I already told you everything that's not in there."

Their eyes met and Ellie remembered that although he hadn't repeated a single word printed in that casefile, Alec had probably confessed more to her than anyone else. He slid his hand behind the nape of her neck.

"Did you want to talk about something else…?" he asked, kneading the muscles there that were tight and achy from all the moving and the stress of new beginnings. Ellie shrugged.

"Do you?"

Alec shook his head and focused on massaging the hurt from those strained tendons with his dexterous hands. Ellie suppressed a moan and wondered why DS Vicky Williams would ever let this talented man go. He was full of surprises and he was making it harder and harder for her to let go. But unlike Alec's ex, Ellie didn't have a choice. They listened to the wind rustling through the leaves in the trees around them and the sluggish flow of the lake until the shadows lengthened and the air grew chillier.

"Come on." She took him by the hand and together they trekked through the woods to where she'd parked in the lot. Alec reached for her door and held it open for her. The clock on the dash flashed when she started the car, revealing a day that was slipping and sliding away from them.

"Do you want me to drive you home?" she asked, even though she suspected that it was a far drive and would probably waste their borrowed time together. "Or I could take you home with me," she offered again hopefully. Alec gave her a long look and Ellie thought for a moment that he might cave. He didn't.

He redirected her further north, but toward the coast instead of Sandbrook **.** They squabbled over the GPS, but managed to get there with enough time to grab something to eat. It was less than fifty miles from the serene lake, but it was a whole different world. The smell of salt and seaweed was in the air, a crumbling seawall guarded them from the perils of the stormy ocean below, and a colony of noisy gulls surfed in the wind and flocked to the rubbish bins to fight over leftovers. Alec took her to a reputable fish and chips place and ordered something fishy that wasn't fried, but he didn't seem to be enjoying. He'd barely touched it.

"I hate fish," he admitted, wrinkling his nose and poking at the white fillet with his fork.

"Then why are we here?" she sighed.

"Because I love you," he confessed, rolling his eyes. Ellie choked on her fried fish and Alec looked up at her, paling.

"Are you alright?" he asked anxiously.

"Fine." Ellie coughed and sucked down her drink. Surely, she must've heard him wrong. "Sorry." She cleared her throat and focused on cleaning her plate. "You were saying?"

"I don't like seafood," he repeated and gave up on the fish altogether. He dumped it into the rubbish bin and stole a handful of her chips.

" _Alec_!" she cried. "Those are mine! You're not even supposed to be eating those!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, shut up. I'm already in heart failure," he retorted, but he returned some to her plate and walked off with the rest of them. Ellie couldn't even finish those chips, because she had to toss her plate so she could chase after the bloody moron. She caught up with him by a rickety wooden staircase, leading down to the beach.

He was on the phone, rattling off an address, and Ellie knew he was calling for a car to take him the rest of the way home.

"You've been here before?" Ellie asked, once he'd hung up. Alec nodded and looked beyond her at the little shack that served surprisingly good fish and chips.

"I took Keira here a few times," he recalled. "She used to love fish and chips." He turned his back on the place and that happier memory, warily eyeing the treacherous old staircase before starting his descent. The stairs were steep and had obviously been battered by too many storms. Ellie was afraid he'd fall but he managed the steps, and the wooden staircase was a lot stronger and sturdier than it appeared. He held out his hand to her, helping her down the last few steps.

"When's your car coming?" she asked him, gripping his hand.

"We've got some time."

They meandered toward the foaming water and the waves slamming against the beach. The wind tore at her hair and the ground vibrated ever so slightly with the forces of nature around them. The ocean was loud in her ears and the moist sand was like sludge beneath her shoes, eroding with every changing tide. The lake had been quiet and peaceful; but this place was so much more _alive,_ and it was familiar, so achingly familiar. It hadn't been two weeks since she'd left, but the last time she'd been to the beach was when she saw Alec, before the storm clouds had broken open and she'd dragged him to the Traders. And the time before that had been with Alec too, with fireworks exploding overhead and sparks flying between them.

"I know it's not Broadchurch," he said hesitantly and leaned closer to her to be heard over the roar of the ocean, "But we didn't have enough time…" His words touched her as his lips grazed the shell of her ear. The spark was still there in the tickle of his hot breath and the stroke of his hand, sending a tingle down her spine and spreading to the tips of her fingers. Ellie wondered if anyone else would be able to provoke a reaction like that or if it was something unique to Alec. She'd _loved_ Joe, but it had been over a decade since she'd experienced the excitement of a "new" relationship. And they were already nearing the end.

"I love it," Ellie confessed as if it was another gift he'd thoughtfully chosen for her, like the rose she had in her purse that she could smell on his shirt and suit jacket. She cuddled up to him and Alec enveloped her in his arms. The wind coming off the ocean whistled in her ears; but Alec had positioned himself so that he was blocking it, shielding her and keeping her warm.

They weren't paying attention to the rising tide and a wave broke on the sand by their feet. Water sprayed them and slopped up the hems of their trousers. Ellie shrieked and Alec groaned. He'd caught the brunt of the wave. His socks and shoes were soaked and filled with the briny water and the wet sand that he despised.

"This is why I hate the beach," he sighed, scowling and pulling up the drenched hems of his trousers to reveal his skinny white ankles. Ellie tried not to laugh, but Alec heard her snigger.

"You're laughing at me," he accused her. Ellie shook her head, but he looked so pissed off and out of his element that it was comical. "You think that this is funny, Miller?" His eyes narrowed and Ellie snorted. "I heard that." He stabbed a finger in her direction and Ellie stumbled back a step with a giggle.

"I'm not laughing," she insisted and started to laugh. "Honestly." She held up her hands in front of her, backing up. Alec suddenly lunged for her, catching her round the waist and almost knocking her down.

" _Alec_!" she squealed as he pulled her into ankle-deep water. She smacked his chest, but she was laughing too much to do anything more. The water curled around her ankles and licked up the hems of her best pair of slacks. But Alec was _laughing,_ and Ellie didn't care that they were sinking slowly and steadily into something that could drown them both. Her shoes got stuck in the quick sand, but Alec grinned and kissed her until all that noise and thunder was lost in the heat of his body, the inexplicable strength in his wiry arms and the old battered ticker that was still stubbornly ticking in his chest. It fluttered beneath her palm and Alec had to stop.

"You alright?" Ellie asked as he rested his forehead against hers, and the rest of the world assaulted them like a wave flooded a beach. He nodded and clung to her until the small episode passed.

She hauled them out of the undertow before it pulled them into its swirling current. They splashed out of the water and climbed the incline of the beach with squelching shoes and their arms around each other. Alec kept stumbling and would've fallen if Ellie hadn't been there to support him. The beach was a little rocky and his shoes were waterlogged and unsuitable for the terrain, but Ellie knew that it was a lot more than a pair of shoes. He could try to hide it from her, but she knew him better than anyone else now. She sat him down on one of the rocks at the base of the sea wall. It was the same size as the one by the lake but more jagged and rough. Ellie liked how it was sprinkled with grains of sand instead of the dried dirt that had left stains on her clothes. Alec seemed uncomfortable, but after two more pills, he relaxed.

"Maybe the next man you meet will be a beach person," he chuckled and coughed into his hand.

"Will you stop saying that?" Ellie tipped his head up to look at her. "It's just you and me right now. There's no one else." Alec blinked and then he held out his hands to her. Ellie thought he was asking her to help him up, but he tugged her closer until she was standing between his legs.

"Ellie, I want you to be happy," he told her again. Ellie's eyes filled with tears.

"Alec, I am happy."

He let go of her hands and his fingers curled in her blazer; slotting themselves into the notches in her rib cage as if he'd memorized and catalogued the location of every bone in her body and could still find them no matter how many layers of fabric she wore.

"You're a bloody liar," he whispered with a wry smile. He kissed her cheek and then the other one. Ellie felt the softness of his windswept tangled hair against her face and neck as he rested his chin on her shoulder.

"You never got a haircut," she noted and Alec snorted.

"It'll be my top priority," he assured her, "Right up there with suing the store that banned me and Fred and writing you three into my will," he told her, dead serious and Ellie almost believed him. "I need to ensure that Fred inherits every rock on Iris' property to complete his rock collection-"

"Don't you dare," Ellie threatened him. "He's already got a million." Alec sniggered and rubbed one of his hands up her spine.

"What would Tom get?" Ellie asked, curious.

"He'd probably want my credit card so he could max it out at the local pizza place." Ellie chuckled but Alec warned her, "Wait until he turns fourteen. You'll go broke trying to keep your fridge stocked." Ellie knew he was right and she wasn't looking forward to it. Alec brushed a kiss over her neck and Ellie wondered…

"What would you leave me?"

Alec froze. Then he gently pushed her back so that he could look her in the eye.

"My heart."

It was such a cheesy line, but coming from Alec Hardy it didn't sound the same. Ellie swatted his arm. "You donate all your organs and I get the shitty heart that's too damaged to be a viable match for anyone," she complained, struggling to maintain the façade.

"I was actually hoping that you wouldn't reject it," Alec said, looking away and scratching at his jaw.

"I'm not," Ellie told him, recapturing his attention. "But I need you to keep it, right here." She pressed her palm to his chest. "I don't want it to stop."

"It will stop," Alec reminded her ominously. " _Soon_."

Ellie didn't contradict him, but she squeezed his shoulder and helped him to his feet. They climbed the staircase, Alec going first with Ellie steadying him with a hand on his back.

"Did you _like_ today?" Alec asked as they sat on the seawall, waiting for his cab. "I mean was it – was it alright?" Ellie frowned at him, confused.

"The date," he clarified. "I wanted to take you on a date, but this is the first and _only_ time, and I know I didn't plan it but-" Tears welled in Ellie's eyes again as she observed how nervous he suddenly was, and how he'd clearly tried _so_ hard to make it everything she'd wanted.

"You're crying," he realized, his eyes widening. "Christ, I fucked it up, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did," Ellie conceded. "You haven't asked me on another one."

"I don't think I can do that," Alec admitted, biting his lip.

"Fine, I'm asking you out."

Alec opened his mouth but Ellie clapped a hand over it.

"We can say goodbye then, because I don't think either one of us are ready to say it tonight." It was a hard thing to swallow, but Ellie was willing to bank on the fact that Alec couldn't do it right now, and that he wouldn't be able to let go until he could.

And she was right.

But she wouldn't find that out until the damage was done.

"Alright," Alec agreed reluctantly. "But I get to say when."

Ellie nodded because it was more than she had hoped for. She could try to talk him out of it when the day arrived, because she somehow knew that Alec would keep that promise.

"And Ellie," he said, reaching for her hand as a cab pulled into the parking lot. "You have to move on. Don't wait for it. There's no guarantee I'll even make it-" Ellie cut him off and collared him for one more kiss. Alec was rendered speechless. For one second, the shadows, the weariness and the pain were gone, and the only thing in his eyes was a reflection of her.

"Ellie, I-"

He never got to finish because the driver honked at them. He slid off the seawall and held out his hand to her. Ellie took it and walked him to his cab. Alec turned to her and Ellie saw a few small words written in his gaze and in the softening of his facial features. She still wasn't ready to hear them. And Alec knew it.

"Call me when you're home," he whispered instead and hugged her.

"You better get a haircut," she threatened him and combed her fingers through his mussed hair. "Or I'm taking you to McDonalds for our date."

Alec laughed and kissed her forehead.

"I'm choosing the place."

"Fine," Ellie huffed and prodded his arm. "But you're paying."

"I'll get the bloody haircut."

"You're still paying," Ellie told him

"Then we're going to McDonalds," he quipped.

" _Knob_." Ellie shoved him toward the cab and she glimpsed the shadow of a grin as he fetched up against the side of the vehicle. Sniggering, he opened the car door.

"See you, Miller."

"See you _soon_."

Alec got into the cab and Ellie didn't watch him leave. It made it easier for her to convince herself that they'd meet again. The day was waning and her boys were waiting for her at home with their grandmother. She stole one last glance at the cracking seawall that had withstood so many storms and decades, and the distant horizon beyond it. And then she went back to her car and drove away with the echo of the waves crashing on the beach and Alec's laughter still ringing in her ears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three years ago, I was locked in a building. It was one of the saddest and scariest days of my life, but I’ll never forget it. April 15th was National Organ Donor Awareness Day (US) and the anniversary of the Boston Marathon Bombing. Please, please, please at least consider becoming an organ donor or donating blood. Chances are at some point in your life you will need one of those things or someone you love will need it. If you take away ANYTHING from this story, I hope it’s that.


	38. The Eye of the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Nannyogg123/Mykelara and pgilmour75 for being wicked awesome!! Also, the brilliant NorthNorthWest began to translate this story into FRENCH on AO3: “Quand la tempête éclate”!!! I don’t know French, but I can’t thank her enough for taking the time and effort to translate it, and for also explaining some of the nuances and rules of French versus English. I have so much respect for her and everyone who can read, write and speak in more than one language. So thank you NorthNorthWest for doing that! This chapter’s a wreck (I had 4 DIFFERENT versions!) but I just got back from the UK (YES I FINALLY WENT!) and I’m so jetlagged after three flights and several layovers and delays. Please excuse the shitty writing! 
> 
> Dear SEA, Happy Birthday. I want to believe that somewhere you’re in a fabulous dress, blasting awesomely bad music, jamming and dropping it low. I understand now why you always counted the days ‘til your birthday. You didn’t have many more left…

Alec finally came home.

Iris had waited almost three years for him to step over that threshold. When he’d left them _that_ day, she’d expected him to solve that terrible case and to come home within a year. A year had passed, and then another. Iris had been angry with him for leaving her behind, but Alec had never asked her for anything. All he’d wanted was for her to trust him that Keira was better off with her and Vicky, until he could solve a case that had already gone cold.

Iris had been in Edgewood catching up with an old colleague, when she’d seen him for the first time in almost three years. The sight of him had shocked her. She'd been a nurse for over a decade, long enough to recognize _that_ look in his eyes and to realize the extent of his illness. He’d changed so much. Iris had been so focused on Alec that she’d barely spared his dinner companion a glance. But it was hard not to notice the way that woman had calmed Alec with a touch, and the way Alec had looked at her as he’d sent her away. Alec had acted like he wanted to protect that woman from everything, including Iris. She’d suspected Alec hadn't had that affair, but she'd been hurt that Alec had turned to someone else instead of trusting her. And then he’d left again with that woman, choosing to return to a life that Iris had no part in. Iris had called Marty immediately, and had continued to call him until she got exactly what she wanted. She finally brought Alec home, but it came at a price.

Alec was a stranger. The case and the illness had taken a toll on him, not only physically, but emotionally and mentally. He was a walking zombie most of the time, and they couldn't blame it entirely on the side effects of a significant increase in his medication. Something had happened in Broadchurch. Not just that woman. Iris had nearly lost her temper when Marty had finally told her that Alec had a heart attack, while solving another horrible case. Marty had found some of the articles for her on the Internet, and Iris’ heart broke reading them. After failing to get justice for those two poor girls in Sandbrook, Alec had been the DI overseeing the murder of an eleven-year-old boy. The case had been solved and the killer had been sentenced, but it was as if there was something missing from the story. Iris didn't dare ask him. The one time Marty had teased him about that woman, presumably in Broadchurch, Alec had looked like he could’ve killed Marty and had disappeared for hours.

It wasn't just Alec's silence that worried her though. Marty had given her a full briefing on Alec's condition, and Iris had some experience of her own having been a nurse, although it had been over thirty years since she'd fulfilled that role. Caring for Alec and Keira had been easy and natural, but they'd also become her two weak spots.

Iris hadn't realized how hard it would be to see Alec like that, after not being with him for so long. He was her Achilles’ heel and the first time he went down, all of her medical training, her years of experience, and her cool head went out the window. She panicked and hauled him half-conscious into her car. She didn't know how she managed to carry him, or how she managed to avoid an accident, when she'd probably blown three red lights on her way to the hospital. Alec had regained consciousness by the time they got there, but was too weak to fight her off when she dragged him into A&E. Or so she thought. She put him in a chair and turned her back on him for one minute to fill out some paperwork. When she turned around, he was gone. She searched the entire A&E, the restrooms, the waiting room, hounded the front desk and called Marty in a tizzy. As soon as he could get a word in, Marty told her to return to the car. Iris rushed to check the car park and found her stupid idiot sitting on the bonnet of her car. If he hadn’t looked half dead, Iris would've given him a bollocking. Alec refused to go into the hospital and they had a row in the middle of the car park. He started coughing, and finally compromised and agreed to see Marty.

Iris forced Marty to see Alec immediately and drove him straight there. Marty told her to wait and took Alec into his office alone.

A half hour later, Alec walked right past her and out to the car. Iris waited for Marty and demanded to know if she should take him back to the hospital. Marty gave her a funny look.

"Iris, he's fine," he told her. "Well, not fine, but he's stable."

"Marty, he blacked out in my sitting room. He is _not_ fine."

"Iris," Marty began hesitantly, "That happens to Alec all the time now. What you witnessed... That was minor in comparison to some of the other attacks Alec has had over the last few months..."

Iris was stunned. Marty was right, but it didn't make it any easier to accept. She'd lost it and this was only the beginning.

"Iris, I know you love Alec, but sometimes when it's a loved one it can be harder on a caretaker. If this is too much or if you need help when he gets worse-”

"I'll be fine. We'll both be _fine_ ," she assured him, despite there being nothing further from the truth. She found Alec sitting on the bonnet of her car again with his arms crossed and more color in his face.

"'M sorry," Alec said.

Iris sighed. She couldn’t blame him entirely; he was mostly a stubborn ox because of the way she'd raised him. Stretching out a hand, she smoothed down his tousled hair.

"You scared me," she confessed, tucking a finger beneath his chin so he had to look up at her. She searched his face and found a heartbreaking apology written in his eyes.

Alec uncrossed his arms and stood. As she turned to get into the driver’s seat, he rested his hand on her shoulder. Touches and words hadn't been necessary; things were always understood between them. Iris looked up at him.

"You know that I love you, right," he told her softly.

Iris nodded, too choked up to reply. Alec squeezed her shoulder before getting into the car beside her.

She made it all the way home and waited until Alec drifted off to his bedroom, before she broke down and cried.

*

Another week passed, but Alec was _fading_. Physically, he remained the same and Marty said he looked better since he’d seen him; but Iris had watched the light go out in Alec’s eyes and she hadn’t been able to get it back.

Keira was _killing_ him.

Alec’s daughter _exploded_ when she found out where her father was staying. After that, Keira refused to talk to Iris, blocking her calls and ignoring any of her efforts to text. Iris desperately made a phone call to Vicky and wound up getting blasted when Keira picked up instead. Keira told Iris that she _hated_ her and that she _never_ wanted to see or speak to her or Alec ever again. Iris thought of the ghost of the man she’d raised, silently lurking on the back stoop and listlessly drifting through the house, and she couldn’t help but resent Alec. Keira’s hateful words and her cold silence hurt her too much for her to be able to hide it from him. Keira was the only person that Iris loved as much as she loved Alec, which only made things worse. Because Alec knew that it was his fault that she was now in danger of losing _both_ of them.

He overheard everything.

Iris heard the door slam as soon as Keira hung up on her.

She assumed that he went for a walk, but he was gone for _hours_. Iris knew that he was a grown man and he’d leave her if she tried to suffocate him, but night had fallen and she was worried sick. He wouldn’t answer her calls or texts. She couldn’t search for him because she wouldn’t know where to begin. Alec obviously had a lady friend who Iris suspected he may have visited recently, but she didn’t know her full name or where she lived or if he’d go to her again. Marty couldn’t help her, and Iris was forced to wait and wait and _wait_.

She clung to Alec’s mother’s ring she wore on a chain around her neck, and prayed that her son wasn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

*

Alec wasn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere, but he thought that it would’ve made his daughter happier if he had been.

He’d stormed out of the house with Keira’s words echoing in his head and had gone for a short walk. Now he was sitting on another bloody bench, gazing at a suspiciously oily pond. Although, it seemed lifeless now, the pond had once been a breeding ground for all kinds of creatures and critters. Keira hadn’t been interested in the slimier inhabitants beneath the surface or croaking and sunning themselves amongst the tall reeds and mossy rocks, but she’d _loved_ the ducks Alec almost had a heart attack when she’d tried to pet them. He could see Keira now; grinning and tossing bits of bread into the water; giggling when the ducks gobbled them up; hugging his leg and begging him to let her keep a duckling as a pet. For a moment the memory lingered like a reflection in the surface of the pond, but Alec blinked, and the pond was too filthy to mirror much of anything. Alec still caught a fleeting glimpse of himself in the water, then and now. It was disturbing that he didn’t recognize either one of those men.

Sighing, he thrust his fingers into his shaggy hair. Ellie was right, he needed a haircut. He rubbed a hand over his scruff and wondered if it was even worth the effort. He wondered if anything was worth the effort as snatches of Keira’s spiteful phone call whispered in his ears and Iris’ wary gaze followed him from a house where he was no longer welcome.

And that was when Ellie called him.

“What are you doing tonight?” he blurted out when she paused to take a breath. Ellie didn’t even hesitate.

“ _Does_ _six o’clock work_?”

“Six?” Alec repeated, dumbstruck.

“ _Where should I pick you up_?”

“You don’t have to pick me up,” Alec told her, a bit miffed that she’d stolen his thunder. “And I only asked what you were doing,” he pointed out petulantly. 

“ _Do you want to go out with me tonight_?” Ellie asked impatiently. When Alec sulked, she added, “ _Or should I make other plans with the cute bloke from IT that said hello to me today_ -”

“I’ll be at the teashop where I bought you a coffee the last time,” Alec growled. Ellie sniggered and Alec rang off.

He checked his reflection in the stagnant surface of a now polluted pond. His appearance hadn’t improved but at least he was dressed well enough. He couldn’t face Iris right now or the crushing guilt that he would feel upon seeing what he and his daughter had done to her. He called for a car to take him to Edgewood and tried to leave Sandbrook and everything else behind him.

*

Ellie was late.

Alec combed his fingers through his shorter hair and tried to get used to it. He’d finally gotten a bloody haircut, but the shop had been cheap, and the barber had been more interested in discussing cricket than cutting Alec’s hair. It shouldn’t have mattered, but Alec nervously anticipated Ellie’s reaction like a foolish schoolboy, wanting to impress the girl he fancied.

“Sorry,” Ellie apologized, suddenly sitting down beside him. “Tom’s staying with a mate in Broadchurch, so I had to leave Fred with a new childminder. She lives next door and she’s a sweetheart, bit young though-” She stopped babbling, because Alec was staring at her with wide eyes. “What?”

“You’re wearing a dress,” he stated in lieu of a compliment.

“Is that bad?” Ellie frowned, puzzled.

“No, no, no,” he rushed to reassure her. “It’s nice. I mean _you_ look nice. I just wasn’t expecting-” His eyes swept over her and he stammered to a halt.

Ellie smoothed down the long skirt of the yellow dress. It was sleeveless and light; one of those casual dresses that women generally wore in the summer. And Ellie looked good, really, really _good_ in a dress. She toyed with the hem of the skirt and bit her lip as she took in his appearance. Alec’s face flushed because he hadn’t shaved, he wasn’t wearing a suit or tie and his hair was still a mess.

“ _Nice_ haircut,” she teased him, grinning and tousling his hair.

“ _Nice_ necklace,” he shot back, touching the tacky beaded necklace at her throat. 

“Tom got it for me for Mother’s Day,” Ellie announced proudly, preening.

“I like it,” Alec decided, rolling one of the amber beads between his finger and his thumb, “And the dress,” he added, giving her a heated look that said a lot about what that dress made him want to do to her. It wasn’t just the dress. She had a new smile and she was wearing more makeup than usual. Her hair was pulled back differently, drawing more attention to the pale column of her neck. She was dressed up and exuding a kind of confidence that Alec rarely saw on her. This was another aspect of the Ellie Richardson that Alec wanted to _know_. He’d fallen in love with Ellie Miller but he _loved_ Ellie Richardson.

“So, McDonalds?” she joked.

“God, no,” Alec scoffed. “Not when you’re dressed like _that_.” He raked his eyes over her again and Ellie blushed.

“I didn’t get poshed up to sit on a bench in front of a teashop all night,” Ellie reminded him, sidling closer to whisper in his ear, “You promised you’d feed me at some point.” Alec snorted. He wanted to do a lot more than that.

“If I remember correctly _you_ asked _me_ on a date.”

“Mmhmm,” Ellie hummed and her lips glided over the shell of his ear, “And I plan on taking you home with me tonight.” She kissed _that_ spot behind his ear, well aware of all of his weaknesses and how easily she could seduce him; if only his heart wasn’t standing in the way. Alec turned his head and their eyes met.

“We’ll see about that,” he said softly. He didn’t rule it out, not completely. Reaching for her hand in her lap, he stroked his thumb over hers. “Ready?”

“You’ve got somewhere in mind?” Ellie wondered, her lips curling into a smile that Alec could add to his collection.

“Aye,” Alec lied, because the place he’d had in mind wasn’t a match for that dress. Blimey, he’d been unprepared for the yellow garment hugging her in all the right places, and blown away by a smile that radiated the confidence of a woman well aware that she was desired. By the time they reached the car though, Alec knew where he was taking her.

He didn’t treat her to the finest restaurant in Broadchurch like he’d promised her weeks ago, but he brought her to what was arguably one of the finest restaurants and best kept secrets in the county. Alec had only been there once with Iris, years ago, but fortunately the place had remained unchanged. The restaurant wasn’t crowded, but an obnoxious group in the center of the restaurant dominated the dining room with noisy chatter and loud bursts of laughter. Luckily, the evening was clear and warm enough that they could be seated outside on the back patio. The deck opened up to a picturesque view of rolling hills; a rich spectrum of greens, dotted and speckled with vibrant colors as wildflowers and weeds bloomed and thrived in one of the last weeks before the official start of summer. Another party bustled past them into the bar area inside, and the cleared tables confirmed that they had the quiet patio to themselves.

Alec pulled out her chair for her and sat beside her at the small round table. As he gazed at her, lit up and bathed in the rays of a waning day, he knew he’d found someone who provided a better cure for the constant ache in his chest than all the drugs he’d been prescribed in the last three years. Tonight, she was so _bright_ and _warm_ that she practically glowed. And he couldn’t keep his eyes off of her.

“You’re staring, again,” Ellie pointed out, beaming.

“I can’t help it,” Alec said simply, brushing his fingers down her bare arm. “You look really-” he choked up and cleared his throat. “You look beautiful.” The words were woefully inadequate and he traced them on her skin instead. “I didn’t think I’d live to see the day when you wore a dress, Miller,” he tried to tease her.

“I was worried too,” Ellie said, grinning. “You nearly went into cardiac arrest when you saw me in a skirt.”

Alec ducked his head, smiling sheepishly, and Ellie sniggered.

“I liked that skirt,” he admitted, and then dropped his voice, leaning toward her, “But I _love_ this dress.” He rested his hand on her knee, testing the length and material of the yellow dress between his fingers. A pretty blush painted Ellie’s fair skin and she gave him _that_ smile again, but the waiter chose that moment to interrupt them.

“Later,” Ellie promised him, huskily. Alec nearly spilled his glass of water on the poor lad, when she stealthily touched him beneath the table. Ellie giggled as the waiter left, and then tried it again later with the arrival of their food. Alec’s kneejerk reaction upset the table and made Ellie laugh.

“Are you trying to give me another heart attack?” he hissed, rubbing his kneecap, and mercifully she stopped. She was going to be the death of him in some way or form, Alec was certain; but she was an irresistible drug and the only one who could make him feel so _alive_. 

The food was good and the wine was superb, according to Ellie. Alec tasted her pinot noir to be certain. He enjoyed those few stolen sips more than his food. His appetite was something else he’d lost, another side effect of a daily pill he was forced to swallow. Ellie picked more off of his plate than he did, and it didn’t escape her notice that he wasn’t eating.

Ellie was talking about the homicide she was currently working that had some disturbing overlaps with the Sandbrook murders that had destroyed his life, when Alec’s heart skipped a beat. He lost track of her for a couple of minutes. Crossing his arms over his chest, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he opened them, Ellie was staring at him and the sun had disappeared behind the hills. Dusk had fallen and night had crept up on them.

One second. One blink. And one more day had slipped away from him.

“How are you feeling?” she asked worriedly. He shrugged, fixated on the hills that were shaded and sinking into the spreading darkness. “Don’t tell me you’re fine,” Ellie said before he could, and Alec sighed.

“Iris called my daughter earlier,” he confessed. “Keira told Iris that she hates her too now, and that she’s never going to speak to either of us.” Ellie patiently waited for him to continue, and Alec massaged his temple. Keira’s snarling voice was circling through his mind again and carving frown lines into his brow. “Iris never had any children, just me and Mar-her real nephew, and her husband passed away years ago. Keira’s more than an adopted grandchild to her. After Frank died and Vicky went back to work, she became Keira’s caretaker and probably spent more time with her than I did,” Alec realized, recalling the many, many sleepless nights he’d spent at work, and how many of Keira’s activities and events he’d been late for or missed altogether, because he was wrapped up in another case. But Iris had _always_ been there for Keira. “Iris doesn’t have anyone else and she’s devastated. She can’t even look at me because Keira might never forgive her for taking me in. Not until I’m gone…” He trailed off, inhaling sharply as Ellie stood up beside him. “It’s going to _kill_ Iris if Keira holds that grudge for much longer and it’s my fault.”

“It is not your fault,” Ellie told him, firmly, but she didn’t know Keira any better than he did. Pushing the table aside, she sat down in his lap. Alec’s arms instinctively encircled her waist and Ellie’s loosely clasped his neck. “You’re not to blame, Alec,” Ellie reassured him, combing her fingers through his hair. “Keira’s going to know the truth one day and how much you love her. I’ll tell her myself if I have to.”

“You would do that for me?” he wondered, finding her gleaming eyes in the lengthening shadows. Ellie nodded and cupped his face.

“I’ll tell her, but only if you run out of time,” she promised, stroking his scruffy cheek. “But, Alec, you have to see her and tell her yourself or you’re never going to be able to rest.” Alec knew she was right, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Keira wouldn’t answer his calls, and he feared that if he did manage to get Vicky involved or somehow track Keira down himself, he’d only hurt the chances of Iris repairing her relationship with Keira after his death.

“I wish I could give her a hug,” he said softly, “That’s all I want before I go, just one more…”

Ellie hugged him, but it wasn’t the same. He loved Ellie and he fell more in love with her every day, but she’d never be able to fill all the holes or heal all the wounds that the loss of Keira had left behind. Because he had _lost_ his daughter.

“Could you check on Keira?” Alec asked Ellie, embracing her. “I don’t care if you tell her the truth or if you talk to her at all, but if you could make sure she’s alright after I’m-” A lump was forming in his throat and he couldn’t get that word out. “I’d really appreciate it if you could do that, just once-” His voice cracked and he swallowed hard.

“I promise,” Ellie vowed, kissing his temple. “She’s going to be fine, Alec,” she reassured him, rubbing soothing circles over his back.

“Thank you.”

He clung to Ellie, burying his head in her neck. A dam broke, but it didn’t make a sound. They didn’t cry and maybe that was what made the silent rush so overwhelming. Alec felt as if he’d let go of something heavy, ripping it out of his heart and handing it off to Ellie, like he’d handed off the Sandbrook case, when he’d closed that file for the last time. Keira still had her mother, and Iris, and Cooper, and Marty, but Alec’s heart ached less now that he knew that Ellie would be there too if she had to be.

Gradually, he relaxed his hold on her and moved his hand to her knee. Ellie’s fingers moved through his hair and along the stiff collar of his Oxford shirt, as he played with the hem of her dress and sporadically scattered little kisses over her exposed throat. It was dark and the table had been quietly cleared at some point by the efficient waiter. The lights were turned down low in the restaurant behind them and soft music drifted through the open windows. Alec was very comfortable and would’ve been content to sit there with her in his lap, merely breathing the same air as her for the rest of the evening. He probably would’ve fallen asleep on that deck with her in his arms, but Ellie had other ideas.

Ellie’s leg started jiggling and her fingertips tapped incessantly against the nape of his neck. His hand on her knee didn’t stop her, and he felt each and every one of her subtle twitches.

“Why are you shaking?” he asked and Ellie paused.

“I like this song,” she replied. Alec belatedly realized that her fingers and her foot had been keeping time with the melody. He’d been so wrapped up in her that he’d forgotten about the music altogether. He cocked his head, listening. The music had gotten loud enough that he could identify it as a softer and more instrumental version of a song Ellie had been hollering off-key, while they were packing up her house.

“I hate this song,” he sighed.

“That’s why I like it,” she quipped. Hopping up from his lap, she finished off her wine. Then she walked to the edge of the empty deck, confident he’d follow the swish of her dress and the swing of her hips. And he did.

Hesitantly, he placed his hand on her waist and turned her fully toward him. He stroked his eyes over her again, drinking in the contours of her body and alighting on the sparkle in her gaze.

“Do you want to…?” He shyly tipped his head in the direction of an unseen piano. Ellie stepped closer and encouragingly rested a palm on his shoulder. Reaching for her wrist, he lifted her hand and curled his fingers around hers. Alec had _never_ done this, not willingly, but tonight they were alone in the dark with nothing but the music and each other. And Alec wanted to have this moment with her.

He started moving, stiffly, and awkwardly took the lead. He was anxious and unsure of himself, until Ellie almost tripped over her own feet. Chuckling, he relaxed.

“I didn’t think you danced,” she said incredulously.

“I don’t dance,” he told her bluntly, but a memory flashed through his mind of dancing with Keira on his toes. “I haven’t danced in years, not since Keira was a wee bairn.” The melody had changed, but they were still swaying.

“If we’re not dancing then what are we doing?” Ellie wondered, gazing up at him.

“I’m not sure,” Alec said, shrugging, “I was hoping you knew, but you just tripped over your own feet.”

“I was in shock,” Ellie argued.

“Sure, you were,” Alec sniggered and Ellie pinched his arm. Grinning, she replaced her palm on his shoulder. When he turned, this time she went with him.

And they _danced_.

It was no more than swaying and slow steps in small circles that kept them rotating within the confines of the deck. Sometimes she’d hum a bar, guiding them when he lost his footing or wasn’t paying attention to the song, but he took most of his cues from her body. The harmony became the steady beat of her heart, the rise and fall of her chest, and the hitch of her breath each time he pulled her closer. Alec didn’t dance. And Ellie didn’t let him forget it, with snorts and sniggers and jabs, until she stepped on his foot for the second time and Alec pointed out that she wasn’t much better. And yet they enjoyed themselves as they navigated treacherous rhythms, and familiarized themselves with a partner who was as lost and helpless when it came to keeping time.

“You’re not even trying to find the rhythm,” Ellie teased him as the music sped up and Alec didn’t.

“Ellie, my heart doesn’t even have a rhythm,” he reminded her and Ellie laughed.

“That’s no excuse,” she told him as they deliberately took another step _out_ of time. And another. And another. He twirled her around and she spun into his arms. Giggling, she struck a chord that wasn’t in any song, but thrummed through him. Their present troubles scattered with the notes on the air as one song transitioned into the next and the next. They were somewhere outside of time and they didn’t want to go back. They both knew that the moment he stopped dancing, the moment his heart skipped too much time and gave out; the music, the dance, this _thing_ between them would end.

Alec was tiring and Ellie was supporting him more and more as the darkness closed in around them. She slowed them down until they were barely moving at all, but the deck was still spinning. Alec shut his eyes and gripped her fingers tightly as his heart fluttered in his chest. Ellie said something. He didn’t hear her, but he felt her palm rubbing over his back and her cheek pressed against his.

“It’s alright,” he lied as his heart resumed a beat that he couldn’t follow for much longer. Straightening up, he stubbornly insisted on one more song and one more slow dance with her. It wasn’t much of a dance, they were holding each other too closely and they weren’t listening to the music. Ellie’s head was on his shoulder and as Alec kissed her hair, he tried to pretend that they had years ahead of them to learn how to move in time together.

“ _I love you_ ,” he breathed into her ear as the last scale of the last song, sank into the pit of his stomach with his breaking heart. Ellie trembled, but he was too exhausted to carry those three weighted words around anymore. It seemed fitting to let them go along with her, as their last dance together ended and the music faded away.

It was too dark for him to see her reaction. He hovered uncertainly like the echo of a discordant note that had destroyed a harmony, until Ellie gently tugged him into a fervent kiss. His hands lazily followed and charted the curves of her body that the dress wouldn’t let him forget. She tasted like the pinot noir and he got drunk off of her. By the time she let go, he was dizzy and lightheaded, but pleasantly warm, loose-limbed and relaxed.

“Get the check,” she ordered him, breathlessly, “And then I’m taking you home with me.”

Ellie swept past him, grabbing her purse and running off to use the loo. Alec paid the bill and walked out to the car with her. It didn’t even occur to him that maybe going home with her was a bad idea, until his heart skittered in his chest, when they pulled into the drive of a white house.

Alec immediately recognized it. He’d brought Keira to this neighborhood when she was small and told her that this could be their home. He’d brought Ellie here too, along with the memories of his daughter that he’d shared with her. They’d sat on that same front stoop, and he’d fallen in love with her as she offered to take him to the one person he _needed_ and _loved_ more than anything in the world.

“You bought the house,” he stated, standing in the shadow of her new _home_.

“You already knew that. You helped me find it, and went through the paperwork, and found the removers, and the schools, and my job-”

“I know,” Alec interrupted her and leaned against the car. “It’s just – seeing it…” he trailed off, eyeing a football abandoned in the yard, a skateboard propped against the side of the house, a pile of pebbles next to the front steps, and a light on in the kitchen. The last time he’d seen it, there’d been a For Sale sign in the yard and it had been empty, and before that… He blocked out the onslaught of memories of him and Keira wandering and driving through the neighborhood, and playing and hanging around in the nearby park. He didn’t know why he’d chosen Edgewood as the mythical place where he and Keira could escape the reality of his broken marriage, but now he wondered if maybe someone or something had been leading him to Ellie, and to this safe place for her fresh start all along.

“I shouldnae be here,” Alec said and scrabbled for the car door handle.

“Don’t be daft,” Ellie snapped and locked the car before he could climb back in.

“Ellie, I cannae-” he protested, feeling the same discomforting eeriness he’d felt last summer, when he’d landed in Broadchurch and had seen those cliffs again.

_God, will put you in the right place. Even if you don’t know it at the time._

The front door opened and a teenaged girl stepped outside, holding a wailing toddler.

“I’m sorry, he woke up crying, and now he won’t stop-”

“ _Daddy_!” Fred slid right out of the girl’s freckled arms and dove in between his mother’s legs. The wee child raced across the front lawn to him. A whole decade of moments when his daughter had come crawling, toddling, stumbling, and running to him flashed before Alec’s eyes. Suddenly, Alec was kneeling in the grass and Fred was in his arms.

“Daddy you’re home!” Fred crowed and flung his chubby arms around Alec’s neck. Alec felt his heart leap in his chest, but he wasn’t sure if it was the arrhythmia this time. He didn’t care. He hugged Fred and whispered how much he’d missed him and loved him in his ear. He kissed the mop of curls that he’d inherited from his mother and held him as close to his heart as he could. And he tried so hard not to think of his own daughter and what he would give to wrap his arms around her one more time.

“I think it’s time for bed,” Ellie announced, shattering the spell that had settled around them. 

Alec looked up at her and then down at wee Fred. His dark eyes were already hooded, his thumb was in his mouth and his heavy head was against Alec’s shoulder. And he was quiet. Alec used his sleeve to wipe some of the snot and tears from Fred’s face.

“Do you need me to take him?” Ellie asked, stooping and offering him her arms.

“No, I can carry him,” he said. With Ellie’s help, Alec stiffly got up off his knees and then to his feet. He shifted Fred to his right side, but the boy got heavier with every step he took. Fred didn’t fit within the cradle of his arms as easily as he had six months ago, when Alec had held him for the first time.

“You’re getting big,” he stage whispered to Fred. “Stop growing so fast.” Fred was too tired to reply, but Ellie steadied Alec with a hand on his back and the weight lessened. He’d climbed the front steps, had crossed the threshold of the house, and had gone upstairs before he realized that Fred was already asleep and he didn’t know where the nursery was.

“Over here,” Ellie whispered and opened the door to the left of him. Alec followed her inside and stopped dead in his tracks. He knew it wouldn’t be exactly the same and that it wouldn’t be fully furnished yet, but it was still jarring for him to realize that this was Fred’s new nursery, that this was their new house, and that this was their new life. And he’d accidentally blundered into it again, when he told himself over and over that he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

“Alec.” Ellie was beside him with her arms instinctively extended to rescue her son. It hurt knowing that her fear was justified.

“I’ve got him.” He went to the crib that Fred would be out growing soon. He couldn’t get over how much he’d changed in the short time since he’d seen him last. It felt like ages had passed since that day he’d stood in a different room, but over the same crib with Ellie, before he’d left for his doctor’s appointment that had cemented his fate. Alec lowered Fred down, and then tucked the blankets in around him. Fred’s eyelids fluttered as Alec ghosted a kiss over his forehead.

“Don’ wanna go to bed,” Fred whimpered feebly, “Dadddddyyyy.” Alec hushed him, pressing a finger to his own lips.

“It’s time to go to sleep, wee Fred,” he whispered, stroking his head.

“But I wanna play with you,” Fred whined, pouting and yawning, “And you never come home.” Fred was too young to understand what was happening to Alec. Resting his elbows on the bar of the crib, Alec blinked back tears. Fred’s sleepy eyes kept opening. Alec was going to have to tell him something before one of them started to cry again.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed Fred.

“But then you’ll go away,” he protested.

“No, I won’t,” Alec lied and touched Fred’s forehead. “I’ll be in your dreams,” he reassured him, smoothing down his curls that were wilder than his mother’s. Fred was still awake, but his eyelids were drooping more and more. Alec kept his palm on his head and urged him again to close his eyes.

“No.” Fred fussed and Alec leaned down

“I’ll be right here,” Alec lied, choking on his own words. “You might not see me, but I’m always going to be _here_ ,” Alec promised and planted another kiss in the center of his forehead. He looked Fred in the eye and told him the same words his mother had told him, before she died. “You can talk to me anytime you want and I’ll hear you. Alright?”

Fred nodded. Alec swallowed hard and hoped that it was true. He hadn’t believed it then and he wasn’t sure if he believed it now, but Fred was a toddler, and Alec didn’t know what other comfort he could provide.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered. This time when Fred closed his eyes, Alec didn’t think he’d ever see them open again.

He could've stayed there all night, watching Fred sleep and recollecting all the memories he had with him as well as the memories of his daughter that Fred reminded him of so often. Ellie touched his shoulder and Alec lifted his head. He’d forgotten she was there, but her cheeks were damp enough to suggest that she’d overheard every word. Together they left the nursery, and he left that wee bairn who had pressed a handprint to his ailing heart behind him.

“Do you really believe that?” Ellie wondered, sniffling as he pulled the door shut.

Alec shrugged.

“It's what my mother said to me before she died…”

“Do you – do you think you’ll be able to watch over him?” Ellie asked. His head snapped up. She was serious. It was one thing to tease her about ghosts or an afterlife, but this was her two-year-old who thought Alec was his father. He opened his mouth several times before he could answer her.

“I'm going to try to be there for you and them in any way I can,” Alec vowed, looking into her watery eyes. “You've got that number and I’ll…” There was nothing more he could do or say. She slid her arms around him and he brushed another kiss over her brow.

“I didnae know what to tell him, Ellie,” he whispered into her hair. Ellie mumbled something about him being a father, a _good_ father, but her voice was muffled against his shirt and lost somewhere in the thudding of his heart and the tick of his watch. It could’ve been moments or minutes or hours, Alec had no concept of time anymore. Right now it was particularly disconcerting.

“Sorry, Tom’s not here,” Ellie apologized, wiping her eyes and changing the subject. “But I can show you around.” Ellie took him by the hand, leading him downstairs and through her new _home_

The house was cozier than it appeared from the outside. Ellie and the boys’ lives were splayed out all over the place. They were still in the stage of unpacking and half empty boxes were stuffed in closets and tucked in corners. Ellie kept talking and pointing things out, but Alec wasn’t tuned in to her as they entered the new kitchen. She’d kept the same table. Alec traced Tom’s name etched into the wooden surface. He remembered sitting down with them for dinner during a storm, and he remembered the last night when he’d had takeaway with the boys, and then he and Ellie had tipped the same table over snogging. He gripped the back of the fourth chair, but he didn’t take the seat, because he could never fill that place at their kitchen table. Not yet…

“You could live with us,” Ellie said suddenly, coming up behind him. She stood beside him and covered his white knuckles with her hand. Alec’s fingers started to loosen beneath hers as he listened to her. “Now, that we’ve moved and settled in, it’ll be easier,” she went on. “You could sleep with me, Tom doesn’t care, and it’s a bigger bedroom than the last one. Tom and Fred miss you and they’d love it if you lived with us, especially Fred since he thinks you’re Daddy,” she reminded him, and Alec could still feel Fred snuggled against his chest. “We’re closer to Sandbrook, so you could visit Iris or Keira whenever you want or they could come here to meet Fred and Tom.” Everything she’d said was true, and it might be better for all of them if he stayed away from Sandbrook. He’d driven Keira out of her safe place, and he’d broken the heart of the woman who had raised him and whom he’d entrusted with his daughter. The only way he could ever fix the mess was if he wasn’t there anymore.

“I’m not sure if I can go back,” he admitted honestly, relaxing his grip on the chair, “Or if I should.”

“Then don’t,” Ellie urged him, moving closer. “Alec, I can see that you’re miserable, and I think you’d be more comfortable with us,” she told him. It was tough for him to acknowledge, but Alec was still more familiar with Ellie and her boys than his own bloody family. “You can sleep here tonight and in the morning we can go get your things. Even if it’s only temporary, it might give Keira some time to cool off and bring her back to Iris…” Ellie’s brown eyes were so soft, and her face was always so endearingly open that it would’ve been hard for anyone to resist her logic. “Alec, you know that I’m right. All you have to do is _stay_ …”

Alec was so bloody tired of fighting his own heart, that he finally let go. Releasing the chair, he stepped forward and let Ellie catch him in her arms. For a moment, he was able to hang onto her, and a whole different path stretched out before them as they merged. He could see weekends with Tom, going to his matches, yelling at the ref when he made a bad call, and buying him food afterward while they both complained about the other team. And he could see days spent with Fred, chasing him through the yard, secretly laughing at the chaos he created, and kipping on the Chesterton with wee Fred curled up over his heart. And he thought that he could see Iris, primly and stiffly sitting at that scratched table, and then falling in love with Fred at first sight. And for a split second he could even see Keira, perched on the counter with her long legs swinging, giving him her approval after meeting Ellie, Tom and Fred, and grinning at him in a way she hadn’t in years. And he could see every day and every night of whatever remained of his life spent with Ellie beside him. All he wanted to do was to climb into bed with her and wake up with her tomorrow morning and every morning after that. And he wanted to be as close to her as possible, whenever possible, even when she was irritating the bloody hell out of him or she was making his heart race out of control in the worst way.

“You’ll stay with us?” Ellie asked him again, and this time Alec nodded.

“Really?”

“Aye,” he conceded, and her smile was so dazzling that he felt lightheaded. She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. Alec clung to her, but his hands kept sliding off of her. He couldn’t curl his fingers in her dress or get the damn clip out of her hair. His hands were shaking, but he couldn’t feel the tremor. In fact, he couldn’t feel much of anything in his tingling fingertips…

“Come on.” Ellie dragged him from the room. Alec tripped after her, stumbling over his own two feet in her wake. As soon as he left the kitchen, that same eeriness slammed into him, freaking him out. But the warning came too late. Ellie was too excited to notice that he’d faltered, until he ripped his fingers from hers on the staircase.

“Alec?” Ellie turned around and held out her hand to him. She was three small steps above him, but he couldn’t climb them and he couldn’t reach her. He was paralyzed as the world slowed down, stuck halfway between the first and the second floor. Suddenly, he knew that he wasn’t going to make it up those steps. He wasn’t even going to make it to the pills. His fingers were already numb, too numb to search his pockets, too numb to crack open the plastic. And his heart…

His legs gave out on him and he _fell_.

“ _Alec_! ALEC!”

Pain exploded in his temple. He choked on something, and Ellie was screaming in his ringing ears.

“You’re not leaving me, you stupid fucking bloody-”

He blacked out.

*

Alec didn’t come home.

Marty rang Iris again at midnight, after she’d called Alec seventeen times and lost track of how many times she’d sent him a text, many of which were probably blank.

“Did you find him? Is he alive? Is he okay? Where is he? Is he coming home? Is he with you?” she rapidly interrogated him. Her heart raced in her chest as a thousand horrific scenarios unfolded in her mind, most of them ending with Alec lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

Marty sighed.

“ _He’s not in a ditch_ ,” he answered, reading her mind, “ _But I’m not sure if he’s coming home_ …” Iris recognized the sounds in the background and her worst fears were confirmed. With a sinking heart, she closed her eyes.

“ _As soon as I get my hands on him,”_ Marty growled, _“I’m going to kill him_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I apologize for the crappy writing and the exhaustion. I definitely made a lot of mistakes (especially with the more recent chapters) that I hope I can learn from if I ever do decide to write another story, but feel free to point out any that I may have missed. To those of you that read the earlier chapters and told me, thank you. More importantly, I want to thank those people that told me that I inspired them to write better stories or try their hand at translating. It’s a nice feeling knowing that even if I did turn this thing into a trainwreck, it wasn’t a complete loss. There are now so many brilliant and well-written fanfics out there and I hope that you guys read them! I want to thank those authors for writing, and I want to thank the rest of you for reading this and the other fics and encouraging those authors to keep writing! You’ve made a huge difference. I never would’ve seen London or Scotland or Ireland last week, if it hadn’t been for the fantastic writers and the amazing group of readers that got me through long enough to make it there. Thank you!


	39. Here Comes the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks Nannyogg123/mykelara for rereading through some of this crap and for patiently trying to explain and break things down for me that I’ll never be able to wrap my head around. Go read her new fic Compass! Thanks to those of you that left kudos, reviews and comments! You’re going to want to kill me by the end of this clunky clanking cantankerous chapter, but I sincerely appreciate the feedback I’ve received up to this point. THANK YOU! 
> 
> Dear SEA, someone died so that you could live, and so that we could get to know you. I hope that when the day comes, I can give someone else the gift that he gave you and that he gave us, by letting us keep you a little longer…

“Wake up.”

Something jostles him and his eyelids flutter. A patchwork of greens, blues, greys, lavender and light - too much light - paint a picture that keeps swimming before his eyes. He blocks the vision out, hoping it’ll relieve the dull ache in his weighted head.

He can remember Ellie; hovering over him, crying and begging him to _stay_. He tried to grab her hand, but there were too many people and things coming between them and tying him down. They moved him fast - so fast that everything was a blur - but he remembers that she wasn’t allowed to follow him. She tried anyway. Someone ordered her to let go and she finally gave up. Alec struggled to keep his eyes on her until a set of double doors slammed in her face, and he couldn’t anymore. He can remember her watching him through the rectangle of glass and pressing her palm flat against that barrier, as if somehow she could still reach him. He thinks of her now, when he’s miles and miles and miles away, and-

“ _Daaaaa_ , wake up.” 

Alec blinks and focuses on a brightening sky overhead. The Scottish highlands spread out before him. Shadows and light roll over the green mountains looming in the distance. Clouds curl around the foremost peak of the tallest one, and deep glens slice between it and the smaller ones flanking it. But it’s the loch that attracts his attention. It’s so placid and calm that its surface mirrors the huge mountains, the clouds, the patches of blue sky and even the person sprawled on the rock beside him.

“Am I boring you?”

Alec turns his head and finds his daughter smirking at him. Her hair isn’t her natural blonde or electric pink anymore, but a less obnoxious shade of purple; more of a lavender or a lilac. It suits her and compliments her eyes, but it doesn’t matter what color she dyes her hair; Alec thinks she’s beautiful in any shade or hue.

“Sorry, darlin’,” he apologizes and tucks a strand of her hair behind her pierced ear. “Go on,” he coaxes her. Keira frowns, scanning his face.

“How’s your head?” she inquires.

“’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Keira asks and brushes his hair off of his forehead and the scar. “We could go back.” Her touch helps relieve some of the pressure and Alec urges her to go on again. Keira hesitates, but reopens her book and returns to a dog-eared page.

Alec loves listening to her read, but with the migraine and the sensory overload it’s harder for him to follow her. Leaning back on his hands, he inhales the fresh air and the scent of the dead earth in the surrounding peat bog. The scene’s so peaceful and calming that it’s almost eerie. He never thought he’d actually enjoy returning to Scotland, but his daughter changes everything. Every time he looks at that impressive landscape or sees his daughter next to him, he questions if it’s real.

“This is _unreal_!” Keira exclaims, awed. She closes the book again and grins. “Can we go look for Nessie now?”

“ _No_ ,” Alec groans at the mention of the Loch Ness monster and Keira sniggers. He’d do anything for her, but he really doesn’t want to do that.

“Oh, come on, Da. What could be more fun than hunting for a mythical beast of legendary proportions? A giant serpent!” She cackles as he rolls his eyes and glares at her. Chortling, she leans into him, and Alec sits up to put his arm around her. He remembers a time when he would’ve given _anything_ for a moment like this, and he tries to convince himself that she’s really _here_.

“I love you,” he tells her for the millionth time.

“I love you too, you old sop,” Keira replies with a smile. As his heart swells in his chest, he knows he has to be dreaming. He can’t possibly be basking in the sunlight in Scotland and hearing those three words from his daughter, after years of her _hating_ him. He kisses her forehead, suddenly afraid to close his eyes again. He’s terrified she’ll disappear.

Like Ellie did.

Another memory hits him: screaming monitors and Ellie; bending over him and pleading with him to stop fighting her. Alec can’t shove it aside as easily and he clings to his daughter.

“It’s alright,” Keira soothes him as his heart races and his arm tightens around her. He’s so afraid he’ll lose his daughter again. “Breathe. Just _breathe_. I’m right here. Close your eyes and take a deep breath.”

Her voice is getting further and further away. Alec shuts his eyes to take a breath, and when he opens them-

*

The lights were blinding and the pain in his head was unbearable. He didn’t know where he was and something was shrieking in his ears. He lost the sound of Keira’s voice in the cacophony and chaos. Someone was shouting about colors and codes, and there was a high-pitched beeping filling the air around him. 

“Breathe, just _breathe_.” A voice broke through the bedlam and the noise, and something pressed down on his chest. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving you. Take a deep breath-” He viciously fought the weight pushing against him, frantically wondering how he’d got there; what happened to his daughter; what happened to him; and why was-

“For fuck’s sake! Stop fighting me and calm down, or so help me god, I will set off all the alarms again and call in every bloody nurse and doctor in this hospital!” Alec’s wild eyes opened, focusing on the irate woman at his bedside.

“ _Ellie_!” he gasped and lurched toward her. His head was going to explode with all the hammering, but he needed Ellie and he _needed_ to find Keira again. He slurred his daughter’s name and tried to grab Ellie’s arm.

“Alec, stop it!” Ellie pinned him to the bed.

Alec searched her scowling face, and then whatever he could see of the room beyond her. He was in the hospital and the room was now quiet and empty. It was just him and Ellie. Breathing hard, he shut his eyes against the painfully bright lights overhead.

“Where did Keira go?” he asked, without opening his eyes.

“What?” Ellie was so startled that she let go of him.

“My daughter was here! She was right _here_ , and she was-” Panting, he flung his arm over his forehead. “ _Fuck_.” She’d been close enough to touch, but none of it had been real. It was only a dream. He hadn’t been with his daughter at all, he’d been with Ellie. His heart had given out on him and he’d fallen down a flight of stairs. Ellie had called 999 and an ambulance had brought him here. 

“I’m sorry, Alec,” Ellie apologized, standing over him and shielding him from some of the light hurting his eyes. Her voice was soft but strained. “I didn’t call anyone yet. The other patient coded and the whole bloody hospital came rushing in. They woke you up and all the fucking monitors went off.” Ellie sniffled and cleared her throat. She was talking so fast that Alec could barely keep up. “Your phone’s dead, by the way, and your doctor’s a tosser who was more interested in _me_ than your condition. The maggot barely looked at your file and wouldn’t give me your emergency contacts,” she spat. Her hand trembled as she grasped the bedrail and leaned over him. “It took them a while to get you settled, but the nurse said you’re stable again,” she assured him, tentatively touching and smoothing out the wrinkles in the sheet covering his torso. Alec’s chest tightened beneath her hands, the thin material of the hospital gown and the leads positioned on his skin.

“You’ve got a concussion,” she informed him, brushing his hair from his forehead in the same exact manner as Keira had in his dream. Her voice was almost a whisper now, “They might let you leave tomorrow, but only if you _rest_ -”

“I don’t want to _rest_ ,” Alec snapped and Ellie recoiled from him. He pushed himself up on his elbow. A wave of vertigo and nausea threatened to knock him out, but he squeezed his eyes shut and stubbornly fought through it. Forcing himself to sit up, he supported himself with a hand on the bedrail.

“Alec, you need to lie down,” Ellie told him firmly. 

Alec shook his head. Grimacing, he opened his eyes again and located the door behind her. He was going to get up and walk out of there, even if he died trying.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she warned him, narrowing her eyes, “But there’s no way you’re getting past me.”

“I’m not staying,” he said and inched toward the edge of the bed. His head swam and every muscle and bone in his body protested, but he was willing to do anything to get to that door. Summoning all of his strength, he tossed off the sheet, scooched forward and prepared to swing his long legs over the side.

“Don’t you dare,” Ellie growled, stabbing a finger in his direction. “Don’t even _try_.” Alec moved at the same time she did. She blocked him before he could even get his bare feet on the tiled floor. Ellie didn’t push him, but she was standing in his way with her hands fisted at her sides. Alec focused on her white knuckles and the tiled pathway to freedom behind them.

“Stay in the bed. You need to sleep,” she ordered him, as gently as her waning patience would allow.

“ _Sleep_?” Alec scoffed. “Do you want to know how much time I’ve spent sleeping over the last three weeks?” He lashed out at her. “They’ve got me on so many fucking medications now that I sleep all the fucking time. Each day is the same as the next, and I’m so bloody bored and I’m so bloody _sick_ and _tired_ of _dying_ ,” he snarled, pausing to catch his breath.

“Alec.” Ellie clasped his shoulder, but he shrugged her off.

“I should be grateful for these drugs, because the only time I can see my own daughter is in my dreams,” he revealed, too frustrated to curb his temper or meet her widening eyes, “And the only trigger I have to worry about now is _you_.” The realization was an ugly one, but Alec didn’t take it back. He was sitting up and the room wasn’t spinning anymore, but he’d never felt weaker in front of Ellie than he did now. Once again, he was confined to a hospital bed, until those bloody doctors could tell him again that there was nothing that they could do but make him _comfortable_. Alec hated that word. Ellie tried to comfort him, reaching out to him.

“I want to leave. Let me go,” he said feebly.

“I’m not letting you go.” Ellie’s voice cracked. For the first time, Alec _looked_ at her and the shock reverberated through him. Her eyes were wet and red-rimmed, and her makeup and confidence had been washed off with the tears. The yellow dress he’d liked so much was now wrinkled and stained with small smears of his own blood that no amount of detergent would remove. She must’ve had his head in her lap at some point, and she must’ve been frightened if she’d called 999. She was doing a good job of hiding it behind her brusqueness, but she was still shaken up, and she was tired, _so_ tired.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Alec,” Ellie told him, blinking back tears. “I _want_ to take you home.” She stroked his cheek. “But I can’t take you home until they say you’re okay to go,” she apologized.

“I’m not “okay” anymore,” Alec snorted and peeled one of the itchy leads from his skin. “If I was “okay” then I wouldn’t be dying-”

“Stop being a fuckwit, Alec!” Ellie exploded. Alec froze with the wire dangling between his fingers. “I know you’re restless, but if you keep being a moron then I will get them to tie you down,” she threatened and he cowered. Her voice quivered but she was nowhere near finished. “I had to leave Fred with that poor girl’s parents, who I’ve only just met yesterday. I’m supposed to be at work in four hours, but I haven’t called Worthington yet to tell her I can’t come in. And I’ll have to call that – Iris – because you’re such knob that you probably didn’t even tell her where you were, and she’s probably thinking that you _died_ and you nearly did!” Alec flinched as she choked on a sob. Her hands shook as she futilely tried to reattach the lead he’d removed to his chest. “I thought that you were going to die on me, right there on the floor of my new house. You even got blood on the stairs, and I’m so _upset_ with you-”

Their eyes met and another tear streaked her cheek.

“ _Ellie_ ,” he whispered and wrapped his arm around her waist. Tugging her closer, he breathed her name and apologies in her ear. Tossing the lead aside, she gave up trying to fix him. She couldn’t do it. Instead she cupped his face between her hands and kissed his forehead.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” she said. It was supposed to be a threat, but it sounded more like a plea. She kissed his temple, and then gingerly tilted his head, so that she could lightly brush her lips over the source of the pain. Alec had been so focused on his dream about Keira and his planned escape that he’d forgotten that he’d hit his head when he fell.

“It’s going to leave another scar,” Ellie predicted as he outlined and examined the surprisingly small bandage with his own fingers. Alec thought of all the scars, bruises and marks that he’d accumulated and left on her in the short amount of time they’d had together. “Don’t touch it,” she chided him and took his hand away. “It needs to heal.” She curled her fingers around his, intertwining them, but her other palm settled over his heart. Alec went to comb his fingers through her snarled curls, but the plastic clip on his finger - the damn oximeter - got in the way. He dropped his hand to her arm, but the clunky thing served as a reminder of everything tying him to that bed and keeping them apart.

“It’s not going to heal,” Alec said quietly, holding her gaze. Ellie didn’t argue with him. They weren’t talking about a bump on his head. 

“Lie down,” she urged him.

“Ellie,” Alec sighed, unwilling to surrender his small victory. “I don’t need to-”

“It’s almost three in the morning and that chair is so uncomfortable,” Ellie complained.

“I bet it’s better than your sofa,” Alec grumbled as Ellie told him to shut up and budge over. He laid down closer to the monitor. She squeezed in beside him on the bed, mindful of the wires and leads he hadn’t managed to detach yet.

“You were supposed to buy me a new one,” Ellie reminded him, carefully tugging the blanket over both of them.

“I said I’d buy it, if I won the lottery,” Alec corrected her as she cuddled up to him.

“I’ll replace it after you move in with me,” she bargained with him, yawning. Alec’s heart skipped a beat. He closed his eyes for a minute and he saw that idyllic future flashing before him again, one loved one at a time. But this time Keira wasn’t talking to him; Iris was suffering from a broken heart; Ellie locked herself in the loo to cry at night when she thought no one would hear her; and Tom found him unconscious at the bottom of the stairs one day and panicked; and Fred was with him, wailing and crying for Daddy to wake up-

“Alec.” Ellie’s voice brought him back to a picture that wasn’t much better. He didn’t have to say anything; Ellie saw it in his face. “You said you’d come home with me,” Ellie protested. “You promised. Right before you-” She faltered and sat up.

“I made promises to you, and my daughter, and Iris, and my ex, and the families of the two poor girls killed in Sandbrook,” Alec pointed out, dragging his hand down his face. “I don’t think I kept any of them.” He gazed up at the ceiling until it blurred.

“That’s not true,” Ellie argued, and Alec heard the conviction in her voice. She turned his head gently toward hers. “You kept most of them.”

“No, I broke most of them,” he confessed. “I gave them my word. And I gave you my word that I would take care of you and your sons-”

“And you did,” she assured him. “You arrested Joe. You incarcerated him. And you made sure that he’ll stay in that prison even after you’re gone.” But it wasn’t enough; it would never be enough for him or for them.

“I can’t even be there for my daughter, not that she cares.” He inhaled sharply. “I gave the Sandbrook families my word that I’d find whoever did _that_ to their daughters,” Alec croaked. The montage of horrific images - those bodies and the autopsies, the faces of those grief-stricken and disappointed loved ones, the two girls’  laughter captured in a last photograph, and his daughter screaming as he left her behind - tumbled out of an unsealed compartment in his troubled mind. “I lied and told them that the case was still open and that I would keep looking.” He had to bite down on his lower lip.

“Oh, Alec.” Ellie ran her fingers through his hair. “You ran out of time, Alec. That’s not your fault,” she told him, lightly tracing an old scar from a fall in Broadchurch on the opposite side of his head. “You gave up your whole life because you wanted so badly to solve it for _them_ ,” she reminded him as her fingertips drifted from one scar to the next. His heart ached as she reopened those old wounds with each deepening line she found in his face. “I’m sorry that Vicky ruined any chance you might’ve had, but you’re not to blame. Those families and those girls, Alec, they _know_.” She dipped her head and kissed his brow. Alec shuddered. In spite of Ellie’s rough bedside manner and threats, it was that delicate kiss and the faith she still had in him that shattered him. 

“You don’t have to worry about Sandbrook anymore,” Ellie soothed him. “They’re going to reopen it for the Tiller case,” she said, referring to the homicide that she was currently working in Edgewood, the one that had disturbing overlaps with his Sandbrook murders, the one that had prompted him to recommend Worthington hire Ellie. As Ellie looked him in the eye, Alec wondered if he’d made a colossal mistake and burdened her with the weight of a case that could destroy her too. “Even if we don’t find anything, Alec, we won’t bury it until it’s closed.” Alec heard a vow and saw a promise in her eyes that relieved and concerned him. He wanted to warn her of the danger, but Ellie wasn’t him. She had a heart fortified by two young boys that relied on the inner strength of a woman who couldn’t be broken.

“You don’t have to worry about anything,” she whispered, pecking him on the cheek. “Just close your eyes. Once you’ve rested, I’ll take you home.”

“I can’t go with you, Ellie,” he argued, “The next time I fall down the stairs I don’t want it to be Tom or god forbid, Fred that finds me.”

“I’ll be there,” Ellie hushed him. Alec looked at her. As the horrifying realization of what she was planning sunk in, he found his ammunition.

“Ellie, you can’t take off time from work,” he protested and sat up. The room tipped and tilted, but he grabbed onto Ellie and she steadied him. “I got you a job with one of the most respected DIs I know, and I’m not going to let you blow it, so you can become my full-time caretaker-”

“I can do both,” Ellie insisted fiercely, and Alec knew that she probably could. “I’m a single parent, I’m already doing it. And just because you recommended me for the job, it doesn’t mean that you got me it. I’ve already proven that I deserve that position-”

“Then prove it to me!” Alec interrupted her. He was being cruel to her, but he needed her to let go. “The only reason why they even considered you was because I wouldn’t give them a full disclosure on Sandbrook,” he revealed and Ellie paled. “If she finds out that I was sleeping with you and that you need time off to take care of me, you’re done.” It was an exaggeration, but Ellie didn’t know this yet. Worthington wasn’t a heartless bitch, but she had rules, and Alec had taken a big risk by recommending Ellie. Alec stared into her large brown eyes as tears welled up in them once more. He couldn’t stand the sight of them, and those bruises, and the lines in her face that he was carving deeper every day. He wondered how she could even look at him, as he deteriorated with an alarming rapidity and took it out on her.

“Ellie, we can’t do _this_.” He framed her face between his hands. “It’s gone too far and we’re both so bloody exhausted-”

“Alec, you need sleep.”

“No, I need to do what I should’ve done a long time ago.” Ignoring her objection, he pulled out the oxygen cannula. Then he kissed her.

Alec had never broken up with anyone. Vicky had broken all of their vows and his heart, and the other “relationships” he’d had petered out uneventfully with no hurt feelings on either side. He didn’t even know if what he and Ellie had qualified as something that needed to be “broken up”. As he kissed her, he wondered if it was possible to end something like this that defied and bended all the rules and expectations of a traditional relationship. They’d been two people who needed someone, that had somehow found what they needed in each other, one night during a storm.

At first, Ellie was stiff and unyielding, sensing what he was trying to do and resisting him. It was so brief, only a moment, before she took his hands in hers. The irritating clip measuring his oxygen levels came off with her tight grip. Ellie pushed him away and Alec heard alarms going off all around them.

“I can’t. I’m done,” he gasped. He didn’t need to say anymore. The kiss had lasted less than a minute, but it had been enough to tell her everything. Ellie stared at him, shell-shocked, until the nurse bustled into the room.

“Honey, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the nurse cooed, smiling sympathetically and winking at Alec. He scowled at her as she came around the bed to retrieve the annoying clip and the irritating oxygen cannula.

“I’m not leaving him,” Ellie defied her.

“I can’t have you sleeping with him,” the nurse apologized with a dramatic pout. “It’s against protocol. I know you’re newlyweds, but you’re going to have to keep your hands to yourself. He’s not supposed to be doing anything.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Ellie retorted. “We weren’t-”

Alec pointedly cleared his throat and Ellie’s face turned an attractive pink. He held out his palm to her and she gave him her hand. Under other circumstances, he might’ve teased her about the lack of the ring, or the missing memory of a big wedding that had never and would never take place.

“Love, maybe it’s time you went and checked on our son,” he suggested, playing into the fantasy one more time. The words caught in his throat as he imagined for a split second what could’ve been, if he’d had more time and more to give her.

“ _Our_ son,” Ellie repeated and there were tears glistening in her eyes. 

“I know you’re worried about him and Tom,” Alec added. He swallowed past the growing lump that made it hard to speak. “I’m worried about you too,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It’s three in the morning and you look like shit.”

“Thanks a lot,” Ellie grumped.

“He’s right, honey,” the nurse piped up as she put the stupid thing back on his finger. “You could use a hot shower and some beauty sleep.”

Alec and Ellie both glared at her.

"You’re beautiful,” he hastily complimented Ellie, before she could launch herself at the nurse. It was the way he said that one word that got her attention. “But I think you should go home.”

Ellie opened her mouth, but Alec spoke over her.

“Go get wee Fred from the poor petrified lass next door, and _please_ get some rest before you have to go to work tomorrow and drive down to get Tom.”

Ellie narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing him. But she was knackered, and it hadn’t escaped Alec’s notice that she wanted to change out of that dress and check on Fred.

“Why don’t you call Iris?” Ellie tried to compromise with him. “Once she gets here, I’ll leave for a bit, and then I can-”

“We already called her,” the nurse chirped, beaming at them.

Alec peeked over Ellie’s shoulder and did a double take. The nurse used to work in Marty’s office. Her name escaped him, but he remembered that she had been particularly nosy and irksome.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about honey,” she reassured Ellie, patting her on the back. “The doctor’ll take good care of your husband-”

“I already met him,” Ellie informed the nurse, flushing with a sort of fury Alec was unfamiliar with. “The prick spent more time leering at me and boasting about all the lives he’d saved playing _God_ -”

“He did what?” Alec snarled and anger licked at his insides. Ellie rolled her eyes.

“He wasn’t _leering_ , but he was an egotistical arsehole. He wouldn’t give me the emergency contacts or tell me anything. All he wanted was to get off with me, even after I told him that you were my husband.” She scrunched up her nose in disgust, and Alec imagined the worst scenario. Fortunately, the monitor started beeping again, and the nurse ushered Ellie out of the room.

“I love you,” Alec said hoarsely, as he took one last longing look at her.

“I’ll be back in an hour or two,” Ellie reassured him, retrieving her purse before she was swept from the room. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Don’t worry about me and don’t rush back,” Alec replied. The moment she was gone, the anger and the grief caught up with him. He clenched his fists in the bedsheet as his temper built up. The daft nurse tried to give him some kind of sedative, but Alec knew that it wouldn’t help. His brain was on fire and his mind was set.

By the time “the doctor” finally showed up, Alec had gotten rid of the nurse and all of the leads and the wires. He was fully dressed and patiently waiting for him. Marty came into the room with his nose buried in Alec’s chart. He lifted his head and appeared startled to find Alec glowering at him.

“What are you doing here?” he wondered, incredulous. “You stupidly signed yourself out twenty minutes ago, but the nurse said you refuse to leave the room.” Alec uncrossed his arms and stood on weak legs. Marty flung the chart onto the bed and stepped up to him. “You bloody moron! Iris called me fifty times. She’s about to have a heart attack. If you were fine, then you could’ve at least picked up-”

Marty never saw it coming.

Alec collared him and pushed him into the opposite wall with a strength he shouldn’t have possessed. Marty’s head struck the framed warning sign hanging there and he swore. Alec was frailer than Marty, but Alec was also a dying, desperate man, and a volatile powder keg that couldn’t be quelled by any combination of drugs when it came to his _heart_. He _loved_ and respected Ellie so much now that he thought that he and the rest of the men on earth didn’t deserve her. Especially not Marty.

“Don’t. You. _EVER_. Go. Near. Her. Again,” Alec threatened Marty between clenched teeth.

“What the hell are you on about?”

Alec almost strangled him and Marty actually gasped for air.

“Don’t ever _touch_ her. Don’t ever talk to her like _that_ again. And don’t you ever even _look_ at her again,” he spat, breathing raggedly and warning him, “Or I will find a way to drag you down to hell with me. Understood?”

Marty blinked and Alec took that as a nod. Marty was too startled to respond until long after Alec had released him and stumbled out of the room. Alec slammed into the first set of swinging doors he encountered and almost didn’t get through them. Cursing, he staggered down the hall. He paused to catch his breath a couple of times and stalked out of the hospital with some of his dignity intact. Once outside, he tripped over a bench and promptly passed out.

*

Ellie returned to the hospital room to find the bed empty and Alec MIA. Instead she found a different patient in the other bed and a different doctor, cursing and rubbing the back of his greying head. He had his mobile pressed to his ear and he was practically shouting in a Scottish accent that was thicker than Alec’s.

“I donnae care if he’s breathing or not. I’m going to throttle him when I find him, and he’s going to be buried with two black eyes and a broken jaw-” He noticed Ellie and stopped.

“Can I help you?” he snapped, irritated.

“There was another patient here, an Alec Hardy,” Ellie stammered with a growing feeling of trepidation as the doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Did you move him to another room? Or can you redirect me to someone that might know where he was moved? He has a concussion and a serious heart condition, and he’s-” Ellie couldn’t bring herself to say it. The doctor’s grey eyes were widening now, as he slowly took the phone away from his ear. 

“I’ll call you back.” He hung up. Ellie eyed the rumpled sheets on the vacated bed and worked out for herself what had happened.

“That wanker!” she cursed, slapping her palm against her forehead. “He signed himself out.” She hurried from the room, muttering and fumbling for her mobile, even though she knew that it wouldn’t help her. “I never should’ve left. I should’ve known that bloody-”

“Lucy. _Lucy_ , wait!”

A hand grabbed her arm and Ellie looked up. She hadn’t noticed that the Scottish doctor had followed her out. Now he was studying her with a little too much interest. Certainly, not the same sort of attention as the last piggish doctor she’d had the misfortune of meeting, but it was still disconcerting.

“I’m not Lucy.”

“You’re not?” The doctor frowned and cocked his head.

“Sorry,” Ellie apologized with a strained smile. “I really need to find my idiot husband before he does something stupid again.”

“Oh.” The doctor snorted. “I think he already did.” Ellie froze and he expelled a breath. “You better sit down for this, lass.” Ellie didn’t sit down, but the doctor told her anyway.

Alec had signed the release forms and assaulted the man as soon as she’d left. She should’ve been angry, and she was, but Ellie was struck by the image of a rabid animal succumbing to an infected wound from an inexperienced hunter. The arrow had missed his heart, but he was in more pain now than he would’ve been. She wanted so badly to take him in her arms and cradle him until the spasms stopped and he took his last breath, but Ellie heard a whisper: _Let him go._

“I’ve never even _met_ you. He attacked me for no reason at all!” the doctor exclaimed indignantly, as Ellie stood there in shock. “Clearly, he’s lost his mind. God only knows where he is or what he’ll do next.”

“I need to find him,” Ellie said, hunting for her mobile.  

“Yeah, so do I,” the doctor agreed, sighing, “As much as I’d like to kill him, if I don’t bring him home Iris will have an aneurysm-”

“When I find him, I’m taking him home with me,” Ellie growled. She stormed off, leaving the doctor sputtering behind him.

“You’re making a big mistake!” he called after her. “I don’t know what you see in that git, but it won’t end well, lass, trust me. He’ll break your heart. He’s better off with Iris where he can _rest_.”

“Well, then don’t just stand there!” Ellie hollered over his shoulder. “Start searching for him before he kills himself.” She pushed through the same set of double doors Alec had a half hour earlier, and strode out of the hospital.

Alec’s phone rang and rang and rang, but he didn’t answer. The doctor was right. Alec had broken her heart, when he kissed her in the hospital and wordlessly whispered: _Let me go_. But that wouldn’t stop Ellie from calling and trying so hard to reach him. Even though, it was obvious by now, that a part of him was already _gone_.

*

“Alec.”

Alec’s eyelids fluttered and a hand pushed his hair off of his forehead.

“ _Alec_.”

Alec stirred and stretched out his limbs. Pain shot through him and he gasped. His head was pounding like a sledge hammer and he felt like a lorry had hit him and then ran him over. Clutching his head, he tried to open his eyes and get his bearings. He was outside and it was somewhere between night and dawn. He couldn’t remember where he was, or how he’d gotten there, or how much time had passed.

“It’s alright, Alec,” the same voice reassured him. Alec groaned as those cold fingers passed through his hair again and subtly took his pulse. “You’ll be alright, darling.”

Alec closed his eyes and let his head fall to Iris’ knee. For a moment he was a child again, and he could almost pretend that Iris could make it better and that everything was going to be _alright_. Then his heart jolted in his chest.

“For fuck’s sake,” he moaned as the pain splintered out from there.

Iris helped him sit up briefly to swallow the pills, but the pain went deeper than an arrhythmia.

“’M sorry,” he apologized as the rest of the horrible night’s chain of events came crashing down on him. Iris hushed him and Alec rested for a few minutes. He was on the verge of dozing off again, when Iris’ asked him what happened.

“I fell down the stairs.”

Iris paused, waiting for him to go on, but he didn’t elaborate. He found reassurance in the fact that she would respect his privacy, even to the point where it was detrimental to both of their aching hearts.

“I miss Keira,” he whispered as she resumed stroking his hair.

“I know you do, darling.” Alec heard the pain in her voice and remembered that she’d lost Keira too. God, he’d fucked it all up. He didn’t understand what he’d done to deserve this. He’d hurt everyone he loved and it killed him to see it in their eyes.

“I can’t do this, Iris,” Alec whispered. “I want it to end.”

Iris stilled and Alec clumsily sat up beside her on the uncomfortable bench he’d somehow managed to sleep on.

“I’m tired, Iris,” he sighed, “so bloody tired.” Iris felt for his pulse. Her cold fingers encircled his wrist, counting the beats of a heart that stubbornly kept going, when all Alec wanted it to do was stop.

“I’m done,” he said and jerked his wrist free from her, “I’m done with all of this.” Finding the cuff they’d put on him when they admitted him to the hospital, he bit the plastic and tore the bracelet off with his teeth. He flung it aside and turned to her.

Iris was paralyzed. For a moment the stoic mask she’d perfected had lifted, exposing the years that were rapidly catching up to her and changing her into a more elderly and weaker woman. Alec reached for her liver-spotted hands that were as cold as ice and shaking for the first time since he’d met her. 

“I can’t live like this, Iris. I don’t want to.”

Iris’s eyes darted across his face and Alec saw something he’d never witnessed before. There was a terrifying minute when Iris didn’t know what to do and appeared more scared and fragile than Alec. Moments later, Iris’s face was masked and Alec wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing. She tugged her hands from his and rose to her feet.

“We’re going home,” she told him. Alec tried to stand up and found that he couldn’t. His knees were wobbly and he was groggy from whatever they’d given him. The last six hours had finally pushed his heart and his body beyond their limits, and he was stuck on a bench, battered, beaten and defeated by a storm that was nowhere near finished with him. 

“I had to park in the second carpark because they’re repainting the lines,” Iris explained, annoyed. “I’ll have to pull the car around.”

“I can walk,” Alec said, but Iris patted him on the shoulder.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she ordered him, and Alec recollected that Ellie had told him the same exact thing. This time though, Alec was too worn out to even consider chasing down a lecherous doctor, who he now suspected wasn’t Marty.

Speak of the devil. Alec could make out the shape of a man, charging toward him, that bore a distinct likeness to his _doctor_.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Alec cursed under his breath as Marty seized his wrist. Alec expected Marty to hit him, he was hoping he’d hit him, but Marty took his pulse with the efficiency of a trained doctor. Alec suffered through Marty’s quick and silent examination, until Marty poked at the bandage behind his ear.

“ _Ow_!” Alec hissed in pain.

“Did that hurt?” Marty asked innocently.

“Yes.”

Marty smacked his arm, lightly, but still hard enough for it to smart.

“Did that?”

Alec swore at him and Marty told him that he forgave him for being a crazed idiot, who had attacked him for no valid reason. Marty helped him up and tossed Alec’s arm over his sturdier and broader shoulders. Alec was forced to use Marty as a crutch as they limped to where Iris had moved the car.

“I like her,” Marty said suddenly, and Alec tripped over the kerb. Marty had to catch him and Alec had to sit down. “She came back to kidnap you. I thought she was going to fight me for you,” Marty sounded impressed.

“She would’ve won.” Alec touched the corner of his mouth, wishing he could have seen that. He missed her already.

“So,” Marty continued, undeterred, “you married her?”

Alec snapped to attention and his mouth opened.

“ _What_? No.”

“Her exact words were: ‘I have to find my idiot husband before he does something stupid.’” Marty raised his eyebrows. That sounded exactly like something Ellie would say. He would’ve been in so much trouble if she’d gotten his hands on him. But Alec could sense that she was already gone.

“She lied to stay with me,” Alec sighed and studied an invisible scar that the loss of a wedding ring had left behind. For a second he saw Becca, and then he heard the ringing laughter that had accompanied an afternoon, when a realtor had mistaken him for a husband. He’d celebrated the birthday of a wife he barely knew, but had commemorated the life of a woman with whom he’d already considered building a _home_. And now all of that was gone.

“How long were you playing house with her?”

“Fuck off, Marty,” Alec groaned and buried his head in his hands. 

Marty sat with him on the gritty kerb, overlooking the shadowy car park, until he was ready.

“Don’t tell Iris,” Alec said. Not yet.

“Why?” Marty asked. “Aren’t you going to introduce her?”

“ _No_.” Alec stood up. Marty was at his elbow, but Alec ignored his proffered hand.

“It’s over.” Alec kept saying it, and yet blood continued to cycle through the hollow, failing organ, oblivious to the fact that he had already given up on _living_.

He squinted at an ambulance idling by the opposite entrance. The red lights flashed on and off, but the siren had been silenced along with the lifeless form on the stretcher. Alec waited until the doors slid shut behind the paramedics and the covered corpse, before he turned from the hospital and walked away.

*

_It’s over_.

Ellie tells herself that, months later, as she steps outside the building shivering and hugs her coat closer. It’s four in the morning and red lights are silently flashing behind a row of caution tape. They won’t be able to put that fire out. Not really. The Tiller case and their suspect went out with a bang. Quite literally.

After thirty-two hours of being awake, all Ellie wants to do is go home to her boys, but sleep takes prevalence. She doesn’t think it’s a good idea to get in her car and drive, not when she can barely stay standing. She goes around the side of the building where she knows there’s a bench. She rests her eyes - just for a moment - and falls asleep.

He’s waiting for her in her dream, sitting beside her on the bench. The air carries the stench of smoke and burning rubber, but beneath the heavy layer of grey the sky’s streaked with fiery gold and hues of pinks so dark they’re almost red. Alec’s face is turned away and shadowed, but his glasses reflect the line of blazing light.

Ellie touches the sleeve of his coat, not the one that he wrapped her in months ago on another morning as bright as this one, not the one that’s now tucked away in her bedroom. He’s cold and unmoving, but Ellie slides over anyway. She drops her head to his shoulder and snuggles closer like she’s done in a thousand dreams before this, and like she’ll do in a thousand more.

“Alec,” she whispers and nuzzles his neck

“Don’t start, Millah,” Alec’s Scottish growl startles her, “I would have you fired.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Ellie yawns and loops her arm through his, “You’re proud of me.”

“He could’ve killed you,” Alec barks and his voice is as rough as his stubbly cheeks and chin.

“I could’ve handled him,” she argues and closes her eyes. Alec doesn’t contradict her, but he breathes her name and light whiskery kisses into her hair. She presses her nose against the collar of his mackintosh and inhales an earthy scent she doesn’t remember. It’s been so long that her brain’s filling in details she’s forgotten with ones of her own design. She hates that she’s losing him all over again, as the memory she has of him slowly dies. Soon all she’ll have of him is a coat, a letter and two promises she has yet to fulfil.

“Alec, he didn’t kill the two girls from Sandbrook.”

“I donnae care about him,” Alec says gruffly, “I _care_ about _you_.” His words warm her, cocooning and blanketing her like that first and only night when he made love to her.  

“I miss you,” she tells him and sleepily kisses his shoulder. His breath hitches. She’s got his arm trapped beneath her, but his hand slides to her knee.

“You can call-”

“I know,” Ellie mumbles, remembering the number he’d given her, “But I don’t need to.” Somehow, in some strange inexplicable way, he’s always _there_. As he rubs his thumb over her kneecap, Ellie begins the gradual descent from one dream into another.

“I miss you too and I...” Sighing, he kisses her forehead and sends her off to another world without him. “Good work, Millah.”  

Ellie wakes to the sound and feel of a misty rain and stares up at a stormy sky. The dream lingers like the smoke on her clothes and that earthy putrid scent that Ellie can’t pinpoint. _It’s over_ , but Ellie will never call that number because she’ll _never_ forgive that woman. As soon as Ellie sits up, she’s forgotten about dreams and Alec altogether. She hurries home to her boys, and she holds them tight until they wiggle free from her to play a new video game that Theo bought Tom. Ellie picks up her scratched mobile and unconsciously searches for the first name in her contact list.

But _Alec Hardy_ ’s not there anymore.

She deleted that number months ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s not over. Sorry. I am so, so sorry. I’m trying to get this thing off my hard drive as quickly as possible. The writing’s probably going to get sloppier as we go along and I get more EMOTIONAL.


	40. The Woman Who Waited for the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TODAY’S MY THREE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! Three years ago, I wrote the FIRST chapter and my original ending (only one sentence survived, oops). I’m not proud of the fact that it took me over 40 chapters, three years, a lot of emotional crap, buckets of tears, and over 300k of shitty writing (including alt. scenes/endings etc.), but you know what? Fuck it, I’m going to finish it anyway. 
> 
> Dear SEA, I finally quit and left behind your ghost in that building that was like our second home. All I wanted to do when I walked out of there was text you. But I threw you out of that place two years ago, never knowing that it would be the last time I ever saw you.

They brought him home and helped him to the sofa, where he immediately fell asleep. Iris woke him up regularly so that she could check the bandage and administer his medications; but Alec wouldn’t eat, barely drank any water, and continued sleeping. He asked if Keira had called and Iris’ eyes watered. He never asked again.

Marty charged his phone, but Alec ignored the flashing notifications; alerting him that he’d received yet another text, call or voicemail from the mysterious “Miller”. The mobile kept buzzing throughout the day, until Alec kicked it off the coffee table and the Oriental rug muffled the vibrations. By evening, the sitting room was dark and quiet, but the unseen screen kept lighting up, like a beacon, calling that ghostly stranger on her sofa to another _home_.

Iris crept into the room and hovered over him. The phone lit up again by her feet, filling the room with that unearthly glow. Alec’s haggard face warped into something even stranger and unrecognizable in the glare. Instead of finding a remnant of the younger man who had once brightened that room with a smile reserved for his little girl, Iris saw a resemblance to his dead mother that made her skin crawl. Suddenly, she was struck by the image of a woman who had been on hospice for weeks, as her emaciated body was devoured by an incurable cancer. Iris had been Alec’s mother’s nurse; but Iris hadn’t been able to prevent her from turning into a skeleton; she hadn’t been able to alleviate the pain that glazed over her eyes; and she hadn’t been able to stop that little boy from seeing his mother suffer through such an excruciatingly slow death.

Iris had quit nursing to take care of Alec, or at least that’s what she’d told herself, and what she’d told her late husband Frank, who’d frowned upon her decision. But now, as she examined Alec and recognized that shadow in his gaunt cheeks and the deepening hollows in and around his eyes, she knew that she’d been terrified of _this_. Alec and his mother had melted and corroded some of the steeliness and cool detachment that Iris had assumed had been her greatest strengths, and what had made her an efficient caretaker; but experiencing that death with a nine-year-old boy holding her hand had changed Iris forever. She’d opened her house to a child she hadn’t wanted, and within weeks her heart was full of him. No one ever signed any papers and Alec was stuck with his despicable father’s name, but somewhere along the way Alec had become her surrogate son. Watching him waste away to nothing was going to shatter her, and Iris wasn’t sure if she’d survive it.

The screen of his mobile went black and Iris waited for her eyes to adjust. She rediscovered Alec in the darkness and tucked the blanket in more closely around him. Stooping, she pressed her lips to his forehead like she did every night, when he was sleeping. It had been a silent routine since he’d been a child; a wordless “I love you” that was repeated every night he was within reach. His brow crinkled beneath her lips and she tasted the dried sweat of nightmares.

He twitched as she backed away and his breath rattled in his chest. When his breath caught, hers did too, and she waited and waited and _waited_. Finally, she heard the sound of his exhale, and her sigh of relief followed.    

“Is _she_ still calling him?” Marty wondered as Iris returned to the kitchen. He’d poured the tea and had set out a plate of biscuits.

“We don’t know if it’s _her_ ,” Iris reminded him, but the curly-haired woman she’d seen with Alec in the restaurant weeks ago was undoubtedly the same one Marty had run into at the hospital. Marty had whined about Alec attacking him over that woman, and Iris had heard a whine of panic in her head. Alec was in _love_. The last time he’d fallen in love the woman had backstabbed him, taken his child and left him for dead. This woman seemed even less promising and more of a danger to Alec’s fragile state. Iris didn’t want _her_ anywhere near Alec.

“I wish he’d answer it,” Marty complained, blowing on his hot tea, “She was worried about him.”

“I’m worried about him,” Iris snapped, compulsively straightening out the place settings. “I’m concerned that she’s a bad influence on him.”

“You haven’t even met her,” Marty snorted as he watched her rearrange the biscuits on the plate and centre her teacup and saucer.

“I don’t have to,” Iris said, lining up her spoon. “You’ve told me more than enough, and you and I both know how irrational Alec acts when he loves someone.” Alec had a terrible habit of making ridiculously “noble” sacrifices at his own expense. He’d laid down his life for Vicky and Keira. Iris bet that other woman had taken advantage of Alec’s weakness, by dragging him into one last lost cause he wasn’t strong enough to handle.

Iris couldn’t even conceive of the idea that the other woman had healed some of the wounds Vicky and Keira had inflicted upon him, and had wept over the ones that she couldn’t. 

“Maybe you’re right,” Marty conceded. He shook his head, still in disbelief. “You should have seen him in the hospital. He was like a rabid animal trying to protect his mate and his cubs. I know he’s got a nasty temper, but last night he lost his mind.”

“Marty, you two have been at each other’s throats since you were children, and he’s dying,” Iris reminded him dryly.

“He’s not dead yet,” Marty pointed out, “Although, according to my prognosis, he should be.”

“ _Marty_.” Iris sighed, but he was already in professional mode.

“A fall like that should’ve killed him instantly, but Alec’s more of a stubborn ox than I thought,” he went on, oblivious to her. “His body’s reacting to the drugs a lot more favourably than I expected. They’ve stabilized him.”

“Marty he’s not _doing_ anything,” Iris argued as he took a biscuit. “His numbers are good because we’ve got him knocked out for most of the day and night. All he does is sleep. Anyone’s numbers would improve, if they stayed in a comatose state for the rest of their life.”

“This is what you wanted,” Marty shot back, spilling crumbs everywhere. “I fought for the strongest drug because _you_ wanted more time.”

“I didn’t think he’d turn into a ghost,” Iris admitted, even though it pained her. “Last night was the most animated I’ve seen him since the day he came home. He actually _talked_ to me. In the whole time he’s been here, I don’t think he’s said more than six sentences to me.”

Marty slammed his teacup into the saucer and stood up.

“If he’s disrespecting you,” he growled, “After you kicked out Keira to take him in-”

“Sit down,” Iris ordered him, and he grudgingly obeyed. Ironically, Marty accused Alec of being overprotective and quick tempered, and yet he was up in arms over the fact that Alec was _quiet_.

“I know Keira’s breaking your heart, Iris,” Marty said, softening and lowering his voice, “And I saw what Alec’s leaving did to you. I’ll never forgive him for abandoning you. If it hadn’t been for Keira-” He broke off in mid-sentence because Iris didn’t have Keira around anymore, thanks to Alec’s half presence in her house. Marty cleared his throat and swiftly changed the subject.

“I figured out who saw Alec last night and got him all riled up.”

Iris looked up from the crumbs scattered on the table cloth she now needed to clean.

“I should’ve known it was Dr. Starzl. He comes onto anything in a skirt, thinks he’s God’s gift to women.” Marty swallowed some of his tea and corrected, “Sorry, he thinks he is _God_ and that he can do anything-”

“Anything?” Iris raised her eyebrows. Marty nodded and chomped on another biscuit, heedless of the mess he was creating.

“He only takes the cases that’ll get him published or will make him feel like he’s got divine powers.”

“The God complex,” she surmised, and shuffled through the faces of a few skilled, but egoistical surgeons and doctors she’d encountered during her years as a nurse.

“Text book example,” Marty said, brushing the crumbs from his hands and his jumper. “He’s going to get himself in trouble one of these days. It’s all trial and error with him. Once saw him put a man on the table who could’ve lived for years, just to disprove some American surgeon’s theory.” He polished off his tea in one gulp and stood. “He was right, but the man died. He plays with people’s lives because he thinks he’s God.”

“God,” Iris repeated. An old memory flitted through her head, an echo of something said over three decades ago in a stuffy room that reeked of death and grief.

_Alec_ , God _will put you in the right place_.

Iris groped for her teacup. Curling her fingers around the porcelain, she felt the warmth of the tea, and a dangerous idea spreading through her like a virus.

“Marty, you said you know this guy…” Iris trailed off, her thoughts racing as the seed of that idea was planted.

“Everyone knows Starzl.” Marty raised his voice to be heard over the sound of the running water. “He’s a knob, but you have to admire some of his brilliance-”

“Has he seen Alec’s file?” she interrupted him. A dish clattered in the sink as Marty paused to consider her question

“No, I only showed it to two surgeons I trust. Neither one of them would do it. Alec’s chances were too low.”

“But he had a _chance_.” The idea was there, the roots sinking deep down as it grew within her like a tree that bore forbidden fruit. Marty switched off the tap and faced her. There was pity and defeat in his grey eyes, but even that look wasn’t enough to check the infection branching in her head and stretching toward a very faint light.

“Iris, Alec’s chances were so bad, that they wouldn’t even give me a number.”

“That’s what _they_ said.” Her hands trembled with an emotion she dared not name. She clung to the teacup and that blossoming idea.

“They’re right,” Marty defended their opinion and his own. “I’ve examined him and confirmed that even though he’s not deteriorating as rapidly as I expected, it’s too late to combat it. If he has another severe episode like last night, I would bet my inheritance that he’ll be dead in a heartbeat.”

“But right now,” Iris continued with her rampant train of thought, “he’s stable.”

“Yes, tonight, he’s stable,” Marty reluctantly agreed and dried his hands with the tea towel, “But God only knows what moronic thing-”

“Take Alec’s file and go to Starzl right now,” Iris ordered him. Marty dropped the tea towel and gaped at her.

“Iris, you can’t be serious.”

“He’s a zombie, Marty.” Iris was on the verge of losing her temper as she unleashed over three weeks of disappointment and frustration. “He drifts in and out of this house like a shadow, and last night he told me that he _wants_ to die.”

Marty stared at her, wide-eyed. A full minute passed before he retrieved the tea towel from the tiled floor. Balling it up in his hand, he stepped away from the sink.

“I bought you three months with that trial drug! I wasn’t even supposed to get my hands on it before MHRA approval, but I pushed for it because I knew it was what _you_ wanted,” he hissed, waving the towel at her. “You’ve already had over three weeks with him, stable. He’s moping now, but once the drugs level out and he gets used to them, he should have six more _good_ weeks, maybe more-”

“He’s not going to get better, Marty, because he doesn’t want to,” Iris cut him off, rising from the table. “He’s killing himself over Keira.”

“I don’t care,” Marty snapped at her. “My job as a doctor is to keep him alive and comfortable. I’m not his psychiatrist, but you and I both know what’ll happen if he sees Keira.”

They glared at each other from opposite sides of the kitchen. Of course, Marty was right. If Alec ever heard the truth about what had happened to that sweet little thirteen-year-old girl he’d left behind, he’d die a more broken man. And yet, Iris couldn’t think of anything or anyone else that might make him want to _live_. She was fighting with someone who had already given up the ghost, and she didn’t know how to stop him from sleeping away what remained of his last days, unless…

Iris didn’t believe in gut feelings, but a stirring within her heart made her stand up to Marty and the science and rationale that they’d both built their lives upon. It was ludicrous, but Iris couldn’t shake the memory of Alec’s mother’s raspy voice on her deathbed, or Alec’s desperate eyes as he took Iris’ hands in his and told her that he didn’t want to live anymore.

“Marty, we need to do this immediately.”

Marty stared at her for a long time, but Iris realized that while she was in danger of losing both Keira and Alec, there was one person she still had within her corner; someone who loved Alec and her a lot more than he let on. Iris was banking on the suspicion that Marty had let his own heart cloud his judgement, and that he’d chosen quality of life for Alec over a high risk that could certainly kill Alec. Marty was a good doctor; he played it safe and he liked to keep his hands clean of other people’s blood. But right now, Iris wanted him to ignore his principles and put Alec’s life in her hands.

“Please, Marty,” she pleaded with him.

Folding up the tea towel, he caved.

“Don’t get your hopes up. Starzl won’t do it unless there’s something in it for him,” he warned her. “I can guarantee that he’ll fudge the numbers and lie to us, so that Alec will agree to the surgery.” She didn’t care. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, a glimmer, but nevertheless there was a light.

“Do what you have to. I’ll speak to Starzl myself if necessary,” Iris urged him. “Alec’s an adult and you’ll make sure that he understands what he’s getting himself into.”

Marty rubbed his eyes. After another lengthy pause, he walked past Iris to the sitting room. He pushed through the swinging door and recoiled. Alec caught the door before it smacked him in the face and stood there, blinking at them owlishly.

“What’s _he_ doing here?” Alec asked Iris, annoyed.

“I was making sure that you were still breathing,” Marty retorted.

Alec rolled his eyes and went to the fridge. He searched the shelves until he found the plate that Iris had made up for him hours ago. Snagging a fork from the drawer, he went out to the back stoop. Marty stared after him. Alec either hadn't heard or hadn't cared that they'd been having a full out row about him.

“See what I mean,” Iris whispered, although it wasn't necessary. Alec was right outside, but he was miles away.

“I'll go to Starzl,” Marty said. He was about to leave when something rattled inside the fridge. “What's that? I hope the fridge’s not going.” He groaned and opened the door. After poking around for a moment, he pulled his head out and Alec’s phone.

“He really is out of it,” Marty noted.

“You have no idea,” she sighed, remembering last week when Alec had tried to make tea with orange juice and had ruined the tea kettle.

Her sleepwalker came in again, searching for something else he’d already forgotten about. He froze at the sight of Marty holding Alec’s mobile in his hand.

“I'm going to answer it,” Marty threatened. “You're being childish and selfish, and the poor lass-”

Alec snatched the phone from him.

“I meant it,” he snarled, stabbing a finger in Marty’s direction. But it was the feral spark in Alec’s eyes that made Marty back off. “Stay away from her.” Alec held Marty's gaze for a long moment, and then he was gone again. The door slammed behind him.

“At least we've found _something_ he’s still passionate about,” Marty observed, optimistically. That was what frightened Iris. She had a bad feeling about that woman.

*

Long after Marty left, Iris peeked outside. Alec was sitting on the steps, but he wasn't alone.  Two sets of eyes glowed in the darkness as the light from the kitchen spilt into the yard. The neighbour’s fat cat slunk off into the bushes, but the mangy mutt remained, generously cleaning Alec’s empty plate.

“How’s your head?” Iris inquired.

“Still attached to my body,” Alec grumbled. Iris didn’t dare fuss over the bandage or ask him about his heart.   

“Did you eat _anything_?” He didn’t answer, but the stray dog licked flecks of salmon from its chops and wagged its tail. She froze.

Princess was back.

Iris hadn’t seen the thing in weeks. She’d missed it more than she thought she would, but she’d desperately hoped that it had found another family. Tongue lolling, it loped up the steps and slobbered all over her ironed slacks. Iris stooped to pet the filthy creature. Something must’ve bitten one of its pointed ears and the cat had obviously taken a swipe at his muzzle. She’d been able to handle blood and all kinds of bodily fluids as a nurse, but the beast’s muddy fur, bad breath and overpowering “dog” smell disgusted her. Iris ran her hands through its matted coat, checking for any other injuries that it might’ve obtained since she’d seen it last. She was shocked that it had managed to survive this long on its own.

“I didn’t know you were a dog person.”

“I’m not,” Iris told Alec, and grimaced as the mutt hopped up on its hind legs and pressed its paws into her knees. She shoved it away and the dog backed up, drooling onto her house slippers. Alec whistled softly and the animal cocked its head. Snapping his fingers, he coaxed the curious beast closer.

“Careful, Princess doesn’t like people,” Iris warned Alec as the dog warily approached him.

“Except for you,” he noted with an arched brow.

“It can sense that I don’t like it,” she groused as Princess sniffed Alec’s palm. “It does it on purpose.”

“And you feed him,” Alec surmised as he gradually earned the animal’s trust. “Why?”

“Princess was Keira’s dog,” Iris confessed. Alec stilled and the beast came to his outstretched hands. Gently, Alec began scratching it behind its ears and underneath its jaw. To Iris’ surprise, Princess lay down at Alec’s feet and presented him with its hairless belly.

“Vicky’s allergic to dogs,” Alec recollected as he bent over to rub the mutt’s stomach.

“I’m not,” Iris said and sat down beside him. “The idiot darted out in front of Vicky’s car one day and she hit it. Keira was with her and she was inconsolable. Vicky didn’t know what to do, so she called me to come get it.”

The beast had all four dirty legs in the air, and Iris pointed to the hairy limb that was more crooked than the other three.

“I brought it to the animal hospital. Keira insisted on coming and she begged me to keep it.” Iris expelled a breath. She couldn’t deny Keira anything. “Princess recovered and obviously no one ever claimed it. I tried to find its owner, but clearly no one wanted it back.”

Alec gingerly took one of its paws in his hand and it nipped at him.

“Watch,” Iris warned him as Princess flipped over onto its side. “It’s a menace. It only listened to Keira.” A low growl rumbled through the dog, but it was distracted by something in the yard. Iris suspected that it was a rabbit. Sure enough, the mutt leapt up and chased the startled creature through the grass and into the neighbour’s field. Iris hoped that they weren’t coming back.

The two of them sat together in the dark as the stars began to go out one by one, and a lighter sky heralded a brighter dawn that seemed so far away. Iris had Alec’s medications rigorously scheduled, but the actual time had gotten lost somewhere and consumed by worry and concern for the younger man beside her.

“She reminds me of you,” Iris said.

“The dog?”

Iris snorted and she swore she might’ve seen the tiniest upturn of Alec’s lips. But it was too dark to tell.

“Keira. She’s a lot like you,” Iris clarified. “She’s got this need to love with her whole heart.” Iris shook her head. “When she fell in love with that hideous stupid thing…” She sniffed and rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand. “She looked so much like you, Alec.” Iris could remember a skinny, grumpy nine-year-old boy who had physically resembled his good for nothing father, but had a heart bigger than his saintly mother’s hidden beneath layers of armour.

“I resented you at first,” she admitted, toying with the ring at her throat that Alec’s Mum had given her along with Alec, hours before she’d taken her last breath. “Frank and I never had any desire to have children. I only did it because I felt sorry for you and your Mum. I thought that you were exactly like your Dad and that I’d given up my career, my old life, my home, and _myself_ for a child that I could never love, and who could never love me.” Alec was silent beside her, but Iris felt his gaze upon her. She’d never told him this before, probably because it had already been understood, like almost everything else between them. Tears stung her eyes, but she held them back. “Then you came home, scratched up and soaking wet, with that sickly puppy that you’d dragged half dead out of a stream…” She inhaled sharply and gripped the ring until the hard diamond hurt her palm. She could remember that day so vividly and how his eyes had lit up, when she told him he could have it, even though they both knew it wouldn’t live much longer. “You _loved_ that dog, but you couldn’t save it.” The memory of Alec’s first smile faded into the first time she’d seen his heart, and felt her own start beating for him. 

“When the puppy died and you got your heart broken.” She cleared her throat. “That was the moment that I knew that I loved you, and that I would _always_ love you,” Iris whispered, and reached over to grasp his forearm. She wouldn’t look at him because she was crying now. Rubbing his arm, she hoped that he understood everything that she couldn’t say in touches or words, because she didn’t know how.

“You’ve always had a heart for lost causes and it’s going to kill you.” Iris let go of him to discreetly wipe at her eyes with her index finger and thumb.

She didn’t tell Alec that she was terrified that Keira was going to meet the same end, a lot faster than Alec had. Iris didn’t tell him that Keira had abandoned Princess, because she had foolishly thought that she could throw her whole heart into rescuing something bigger and beyond her control.

“You’re too young.” She stared at his unlined hand on her shoulder that bore no signs of the illness that was rapidly aging the rest of his body and mind. “This isn’t fair,” she railed, “You were supposed to bury me in the lovely little plot I picked out. I was so looking forward to you and Marty fighting over my will, and seeing what silly thing Keira’s going to spend her inheritance on when she’s old enough. Marty and I have a bet that she’ll buy a stupid motorcycle, solely because her Mum forbade it.”

Alec made a wheezy sound that turned into a sputtering cough. Iris rubbed circles over his back until he was done.

“Sorry, I’m taking your cemetery plot,” he apologized and Iris patted his knee.

“Don’t worry about it darlin’, the geese always shit on it anyway.”

Alec snorted.

“Once I’m buried there, they won’t be the only ones desecrating it,” he said and cracked an actual smile. “Millah’s going to piss on it and I bet Keira will try to drive my old car over it.” Vicky must’ve explained at some point why the car insurance had skyrocketed.

“She sounds like a wonderful woman, Alec,” Iris deadpanned as her suspicions about that woman were confirmed.

“Oh, she is,” Alec agreed as the smile faded from his face. “You would’ve _loved_ her.” Iris couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic, but it wouldn’t have changed her opinion. Shutting his eyes, he scratched at his chest and leaned back against the door.

“She’s going to kill me if Keira doesn’t do it first,” his voice shifted pitch and he cringed.

“Darling,” Iris whispered, “There’s still time. Keira will come around.”

“Not until I’m dead.”

The truth in those quivering words hung in the air, smothering them. She didn’t know what to say to him.

“Iris, you know that I’m right.” He stared blankly ahead of him. “You can try to force her to forgive me, but it’s only going to make things worse for all of us.”

“That’s not true,” Iris protested. Alec rolled his head to look at her. Iris’ heart broke because she couldn’t lie to him. Somehow, he already knew.

“Even if she could tolerate me... I don’t want to make her watch me die. Not like _that_.” He didn’t have to explain, Iris had been there when his Mum was dying. “She already hates me enough and I love her too much to do that to her.” A tear dripped down his nose and his long lashes fluttered as another one followed. “I _want_ to see her, more than anything, but the worse I get, the more I hope that she doesn’t have to see me… Not like _this_.” He choked up and Iris did too.

“It won’t be like that, darlin’, I promise,” Iris soothed him as he furiously scrubbed at his eyes. He was breaking down on her, and it was strengthening her resolve to do whatever it took to save him from the fate he feared. She was going to wait for Marty, but she already knew that if this was what Alec wanted, then nothing would stop her from making it happen as soon as possible. They’d already wasted too much time, and Iris was unwilling to lose a second more.

“I’m going to do _everything_ that I can for you,” she vowed.

“I’m already on enough bloody drugs,” he groaned, dragging his hands down his face. “I’ll stop taking them, if that’ll-”

Iris cut him off, before he could say anymore.

“Alec, I had Marty get a second opinion. He’s going to see another surgeon,” she informed him. Alec blinked and dropped his hands. Iris reached out and took his cold fingers between hers, like he’d done the other night, when they’d both been so exhausted and scared. As she gripped his hands and searched his eyes, she found a light she’d mistakenly thought had burnt out weeks ago.

That was all she needed from him. 

After Marty had left, he’d sent her a couple of links to an online medical journal. It had taken Iris more time to find her reading glasses and to figure out how to open them in the text message, than to actually read them. The surgery seemed so simple, almost too simple, considering the complexity of Alec’s specific condition. Marty didn’t know if Starzl would consider Alec as a viable candidate yet for the procedure, but Alec wasn’t interested in reading the articles anyway. She offered to hunt down his glasses.

“I trust you,” he said, dismissively, and told her not to bother searching for them. He’d said the same thing when he’d entrusted his only child with her. Iris hesitated, wondering if she was making another mistake, but there was nothing else that she could do for him and it would be his decision.

“Think about it,” Iris urged him, releasing his hands. “You don’t have to answer now or we can forget about this altogether.”

It was almost dawn and the sky was grey. Alec was a solidifying shadow as the day crept closer.

“How soon?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “It might not even be a possibility…” Over three decades ago, Iris had risked everything to take Alec home with her, and now she was risking both of their lives for a fraction of a chance that she might be able to do it again. A virus called Hope had infiltrated her body so thoroughly, that Iris couldn’t even begin to think of what would happen if he trusted her with his life and the surgeon failed.

Iris’ hopes were quickly dashed about one thing, though. Princess returned, victoriously trotting into the yard with something small and furry dangling from its mouth. The mutt proudly deposited the gift at Alec’s feet and wagged its tail.

“That’s revolting.” Iris almost gagged. Sitting back on its hind legs, Princess adoringly gazed up at Alec with large brown eyes that had already won him over. Alec nudged the limp bundle of fur with his toe and the baby bunny shot across the yard with one last burst of adrenaline. The poor creature would die anyway, but at least the repulsive mutt wouldn’t be the last thing it saw. Princess whined until it got some attention from its new master. Alec was over thirty years older, but Iris caught a glimpse of that nine-year-old boy falling in love with a dog all over again. He was hopeless.

“Keira’s right. You’re an old sop,” Iris sighed. It was embarrassing how easily he caved, but she loved him for that very reason. For a moment, it almost felt like the old days, and Iris half expected Keira to squeeze in between them and drag the panting hideous beast into her lap.

“Who’s a good boy,” Alec crooned, mocking those other daft pet owners and his own daughter, unbeknownst to him. Iris rolled her eyes.

“Don’t start,” she chided him as he sniggered. “And don’t even think about bringing it in the house,” she added sternly.

The dog claimed her place on the stoop as soon as she stood up. Iris combed her fingers through Alec’s hair, careful to avoid the bandage behind his ear. And as Alec glanced up at her with the first glimmer of a dawning day reflected in his eyes and a smile she thought she’d never see again, Iris wondered again if she’d made a mistake.

But it was too late.

Alec had made his decision before the sun had risen.

*

They had a row: a one-sided row.

“Ellie, I’m _fine_ ,” he repeated for the fourth time. 

“ _I know that_ now _, but for the last twenty-seven hours I had no bloody idea where you were, or if you’d already died and had moved in to haunt my attic_ -”

“You don’t have an attic and I texted you,” Alec argued.

“ _Four bloody words_!”

“Five, it had five words-” he corrected her, but Ellie wasn’t listening, and she didn’t care about a text or that he’d told her in the hospital that it was over. She was nowhere near done with him, she was just getting started.

Ellie yelled at Alec for being an arse and not answering her, and she had enough names and insults for him to fill an Oxford dictionary. Alec was about to mute the phone or hang up altogether, when it hit him that this could be the last time he ever heard her voice. He let her rage until she was hoarse and had run out of things to call him in English. She repeated something in Gàidhlig she’d learned from him, and concluded with an impressive string of syllables that might’ve been French or German. He didn’t need a translation, he’d fucked up and he’d hurt her again. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, “I’ll let you go.”

“ _Don’t you dare hang up_ ,” Ellie growled. Her voice was rough with the weariness of almost forty hours without sleep. It was his fault that she hadn’t slept, because she’d been so worried about him.

“Go back to sleep, Ellie.”

“ _I’m already up_ ,” she grumbled, but Alec could hear her slipping away from him. The sun had risen, but the days were longer now. There was still room for another hour or two of sleep before she had to get up with Fred or Tom. “ _Don’t hang up_ ,” Ellie repeated with an underlying threat that was lost on him. He was picturing her in bed with her snarled curls, and her sleepy half-lidded eyes and –

“ _Alec_?”

“I’m still here,” he murmured. “Go to sleep.”

Ellie yawned and replied with an indecipherable mumble that sounded like “knob”. Gradually, her breathing evened out. Alec closed his eyes and imagined that he was there beside her. His heart slowed to a more regulated pace as he tried to focus on nothing but her and the sound of her breathing. He couldn’t match his heartbeat to hers, but he could remember the weight and the warmth of her palm on his chest. He longed to crawl into bed with her and hold her until he took his last breath.

Instead she fell asleep without him, and her phone clattered to the floor.

“Ellie?”

Alec clung to his own mobile until he couldn’t anymore. The line had gone dead. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to say goodbye. He flung his battered phone across the yard and buried his head in his hands.

When Marty finally returned, they found him sitting in the same spot with bloodshot eyes, and another splintering crack in the mobile phone that he kept turning over and over in his right hand.

They didn’t have to say a word.

Alec stood and looked at Iris.

“I’ll do it.”

“Alec, you should think about this-” Marty started.

“I don’t bloody care what he does to my heart,” Alec snapped, “Just put me under.”

Marty and Iris exchanged a glance.

“Have you talked to-” Marty halted, because they all knew that he didn’t have a shot in hell of getting a hold of his daughter right now. Alec didn’t want to talk to Vicky, he’d parted ways with her years ago, and it was mostly her fault that he couldn’t see his own daughter. There was only one other person he _should_ talk to…

The phone buzzed in his hand.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Alec, either shut it off or take her calls.” Iris’ irritability was the only sign of her fraying nerves, but Alec didn’t miss the audible contempt she had for Ellie.  Marty merely shook his head and went inside. Ignoring the ache in his chest, Alec shut the mobile off and shoved it into his pocket.

Iris compulsively straightened Alec’s blue jumper. He had no recollection of changing clothes, but they must’ve helped him at some point. She surreptitiously checked the bandage behind his ear, under the guise of fixing his collar.

“Alec,” Iris began more carefully, “This is a big decision. Marty’s right, if you’re not going to talk to anyone, you should at least sleep on it _,”_ she suggested.

“I don’t need to,” he said, taking her veined wrists and gently lowering her arms. “I trust you, Iris.” He held her gaze. “That’s _my_ decision.” The last time someone had forced him to see a doctor everything had gone up in smoke, but Alec didn’t have anything left to burn. Iris cleared her throat.

“We have an appointment with Starzl at ten o’clock tomorrow.” She toyed with her necklace: one of her few nervous ticks. The facets of the small diamond caught the light, distracting him. Alec couldn’t take his eyes off of the precious stone, or the gnarled but rock steady fingers of someone who had shaped him into the man he used to be: a better man, a _good_ man, a man that Ellie never knew. And yet Ellie had loved him anyway. Iris was having a hard time accepting that man was gone, but she was trying. She’d aged so much in the weeks since he’d arrived home, but he’d probably put a decade on her in the three he’d been gone. She was still so incredibly strong. Ellie couldn’t have been more different, but Alec had recognized a sort of strength in her that he’d only found in Iris.

“Ellie.”

“What?” Iris asked, blinking. Alec had hooked a finger beneath the chain of the necklace, raising the ring so that it swung and spun in the space between them.

“Her name: it’s Ellie,” he told Iris, opening up to her for the first time.  

Their eyes met and Alec let go of the chain.

“I never thanked you for taking me in, all those years ago,” he said, suddenly aware of the time and how much of hers she’d devoted to him long before he met Ellie and her boys. “You gave up so much and I was never able to repay you...”

“Oh, darling,” Iris sighed and firmly took his face between her cool hands that were now covered in varicose veins. “Alec,” she whispered with tears glittering in her eyes, “I’m not going to lie and say that raising you was easy. I had days - I _still_ have days - when I wished I could’ve pawned that ring and you, but no one would take you.”

Alec’s rusty laugh made her smile. He hadn’t seen her smile like that in years and the amount of lines in her face took his breath away. Iris touched the lingering crinkles at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there three years ago.

“That day when I took you home...” Her smile turned rueful as she searched his eyes and an entire life of shared memories passed before them. “Darling… that was the _best_ decision I ever made.”

Alec wanted to believe her, but there was too much heartbreak and Keira’s tangible absence wordlessly spoken in their exchange. He couldn’t rewrite the past and he didn’t know if he would want to, but he hoped that by putting his life in her hands he could fix at least one of the mistakes that had weighed upon her shoulders. After everything she’d sacrificed for him, he hoped he could be brave enough to do this for her.

“I should’ve taken better care of you,” he apologized and kissed her wrinkled forehead. She’d done it a million times before, always when he was sleeping, but Alec always _knew_.

Iris was speechless, but her eyes glistened.

They didn’t have to say anything more. Everything had been said. He made her a cup of tea without burning anything, and she sat with him until his next round of medications knocked him out. Ellie called again, but he never got the message. His phone was off and his mind was made up.

The next morning, Iris passed him a pen and Alec signed his life away.

*

It takes Ellie months to reach a point where she can approach that white house without imagining burning it to the ground.

Summer’s cold and wet, autumn’s stormy and busy, and winter’s when she starts to feel warm again in her empty bed. Fred’s asthma is treatable, the trips to A&E stop, the Tiller case is solved, and they’ve all grown into their new home and established a place in the community. Ellie earns Worthington and her co-worker’s respect and gets invited out for the occasional drink. Tom makes friends on the football team, and fancies a girl in his Maths class; Fred makes friends in his play group, and gets more kisses and hugs than Ellie or Tom combined. Her little heartbreaker even gets a marriage proposal from a precocious four-year-old that looks like she’ll be able to knock someone’s teeth out by the age of six. Spring thaws the last of the ice around her heart and heals the scar that a signature left behind. She starts to open herself up to someone, and she laughs more easily, and she smiles more frequently, and she’s finally _happy_.

Or at least that’s what everyone thinks.

The only one who knows the truth about what happened on _that_ hot summer day in June is Lucy.

Ellie never tells anyone else.

Until one day, they’re forced to reopen the Sandbrook case again and a single stemless rose shows up on her desk. It’s her favourite shade of orange but the tips of the petals are pink, reminding her of a sunrise or a sunset, and a man who had pressed her hand and had wordlessly asked her for _forgiveness_.

And Ellie knows that it’s time to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was 10 sentences of a 2015 outline that I affectionately dubbed “The Skeleton”, but that little skeleton has been in my closet since 2014. In 2013 I had no idea where Alec was going when he held his hand out to Ellie to help her up off that bench. I was almost too scared to make Alec/Ellie happen, but when I wrote the second one shot and considered keeping it for an ending, I knew their story wasn’t over. It’s still not over. There are parts of this story that I want to burn, but there are other parts that I love because I honestly and truly love these characters (my AU versions), and even though I have no concept of grammar or research or plotting or structure, I still love writing. It took me a very long time to get here and I’m so grateful for those of you that read 1 or all 40 of these beastly chapters. Thank you!


	41. When the Wind Picked Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) This is NOT the last chapter, but you can stop reading at any time, and I won’t take it personal. I’m so grateful for your support up to this point, and even more indebted to those that continue to stick with me and give me feedback. I love each and every one of you. 2) PLEASE stop asking me how many chapters there will be. Every time someone asks me this, I feel like a failure. I am trying to get this done as fast as I can, but I have no beta and it’s like a piece of furniture that’s still waiting to be put together by an idiot. Someone once described this story as “a bit of a mess” and it is, and so am I. 3) I’ve had most of this story in my head for 2-3 years and this section has been written for at least 9-12 months. I’ve spent YEARS worrying over the fact that I couldn’t write something half as good as someone else or that I couldn’t come up with something different or better. I can’t do that anymore or I’ll never finish. The other authors on here are BRILLIANT, go read their stuff. Please don’t compare me to them, I can’t write like they do, I only write because I like writing. This is the story that I need to tell, this is the universe that I chose 2-3 years ago to write it out in, and I’m going to say it in the way I planned and the way I have to. If you feel that I’ve plagiarized or I have made an error, PLEASE point it out to me, but I’m done panicking. This is hopefully the last time I’ll have to say this. 
> 
> Dear SEA, I wanted your fleece coat, that’s the only thing I asked for when they had to go through your whole life splayed out in your closet. But first we had to go through over twenty years in pictures. We didn’t always get along, but I was in almost every single one of those photographs. That was the moment I broke down, because I realized you’d taken a part of me with you.

They moved fast – so fast that it was all a blur. One minute he was breaking up with Ellie in a hospital bed, and the next he was back in the same bloody hospital, but this time he was across the desk from a doctor that had a serious case of Narcissism. Alec wondered how he even got his head out of his arse and into the hospital every morning. There was something else that was troubling about Dr. Stuck-up-his-Arse, but after a few minutes of his spiel, Alec stopped caring. Alec had the dimmest recollection that this might have had something to do with Marty and… Alec couldn’t block Ellie out fast enough. The door only needed to be cracked for the avalanche of memories to hit.

Ellie would hate him for this. She’d never forgive him or understand why he _had_ to do this. Iris wanted him to go through with this because she needed to do _something_ for him, and she wouldn’t be able to let go until every possible option had been exhausted. Marty was only doing this because he loved Iris, and this was what she wanted. Alec wondered if Iris was what drove him here, or if it was exhaustion, or if there was the tiniest part of him that still _hoped_.

“ _Alec_ , sit down.”

Iris, Marty and the smarmy doctor were staring at him. Alec had unconsciously risen to his feet and was half-turned toward the closed door. All he had to do was walk out, and he’d have at least two more months with Iris, Ellie, Tom and Fred. But Alec thought of Keira and her absence weighed upon him and Iris’ frail shoulders. The doctor sighed and checked his watch. Alec looked at Iris’ pale face and resumed his seat in front of Dr. Stuck-up-his-Arse. Iris patted Alec’s knee, exchanging an anxious glance with Marty. They didn’t have to worry. Alec had already shut down.

"Forty-two-year-old male, Caucasian, no family history-"

"Forty-one," Alec corrected him automatically.

Dr. Stuck-up-his-Arse paused and frowned. There was something familiar about Dr. Joseph Starzl that Alec _really_ didn’t like, but couldn’t put his finger on. Starzl glanced down and there was contempt in his voice as he asked Alec again for his date of birth. Alec rattled it off for the second time. Iris touched his arm, her eyes sad, and it dawned on him. His birthday had been three days ago and no one had noticed or cared.

"Forty-two," Dr. Stuck-up-his-arse went on, and there were no more interruptions. Alec checked out, signed on all the dotted lines and walked out without waiting for Iris or Marty.

They got him a cake later, something he could supposedly eat but all of them found inedible. It was gluten-free, sugar-free, cholesterol-free or whatever, and it was awful. Alec forced down a few bites for Iris' sake, but it tasted like solid chalk. She dumped it in the rubbish bin and cleared their plates, so they didn't have to pretend anymore.

Alec sat at the head of the silent table and thought of a candlelit kitchen, a stolen piece of chocolate, and a woman he’d kissed after she’d made her wish and blown out the candle. Over three decades of birthdays passed before his eyes, but the one that stood out the most was his thirty-third; when Keira had clambered into his lap and blown out the candles for him; and Iris had beamed at him; and Vicky had draped her arms around him and kissed his cheek. Marty had gotten a picture of them that still sat on Iris' mantel. They'd been happy, all of them that day, Alec was certain. It was one of those memories that he treasured and returned to over and over again, although it pained him.

Iris had gone to the closest mall and quickly purchased a gift for him. Even in that short amount of time she'd managed to find a black coat almost identical to the one he always wore except in the heat of summer. This one was obviously more expensive and had been chosen with care. Alec touched the lapels, but didn't unfold it or take it out of the box.

"I won't need this," he said aloud. Marty glowered at him. Alec couldn't look at Iris, but he knew he'd hurt her by reminding her that he might not survive the end of the week, let alone the end of the season. "I meant that I already have a coat," he backtracked. He’d never get the sand out of the pockets, and the seams were worn and torn from thorns and grief; but his coat smelled like Ellie and he swore it was warmer because of her too.

"Alec, that mackintosh isn't warm enough," Iris reasoned.

"I have another warmer coat,” he replied.

"No, you don't." Iris was adamant.

"Yes, I do,” he persisted. “It's upstairs-"

"Darling, I looked. It's not there.” Alec opened his mouth to argue with her and stopped. He'd given it to Ellie the morning after he’d slept with her at the Traders. He couldn't hide the blush that crept up his neck, flooded his cheeks and burned the tips of his ears.

"You're right, I think I left it at one of the hotels," he stammered. Pushing his chair back, he mumbled a thank you and left the room without the coat.

Alec didn’t know what strings were pulled, or how much money might’ve been offered, or what kind of favours were called in, but Marty, Iris and Starzl somehow bypassed NHS regulations and got him scheduled for a surgery in the same week. All his affairs were in order, but Alec spent the next three days double-checking and triple-checking that Iris and Keira would be taken care of in any way he could.

He read and reread his will, but there was only so much that you could put in a legal document. Alec tried filling in the blanks with a new letter to replace the one he’d lost, but the drugs clouded his mind and the memories overwhelmed him. He’d put his heart down on that first page in the Traders and he couldn’t do it again. Writing wasn’t something that came easily to him, and instead of words, her name and tears blotted the page. Keira wouldn’t read it anyway. The pen exploded and he gave up. Ink bled through the whole notebook and stained his hands; it wouldn’t come off with soap and water.

The solicitor had told him that Keira would be a very lucky girl. He hoped that she was right.

Framed pictures lined the mantel in the sitting room; starting with Iris and Frank’s wedding photo and ending with the same picture of Keira that Cooper had peeled off of Vicky’s refrigerator for him. It had been blown up and put in a silver frame that accented the striking young woman in the photograph and made her look even older. Alec held it in his hands for a long time, before traveling down the line to the days when he had a family. He did this daily, memorizing each face and reliving every moment.

It struck him that there weren’t many pictures of Keira after he’d left. The one he had in his wallet was the most recent, but there were only two others of her as a teenager. The fourteen-year-old Keira at a school dance, Alec recognized. The other photograph had been taken months later, right about the time he’d last seen her. Keira had a streak of pink in her hair and Princess in her arms. Vicky hadn’t sent him nearly enough pictures of Keira, but she’d still sent him more via email and text than Iris had in her house. Alec chalked it up to Iris’ ongoing struggle with technology. There weren’t any recent pictures of Keira with Vicky either, and Alec wondered if she’d taken them down for his sake or her own.

Alec’s whole life was spread out on that mantel in a series of pictures, and for a moment the room felt full of everyone he’d ever loved. Iris had even salvaged and framed a black and white photograph of him with his Mum before she got sick. There was only one thing missing. He took out his wallet and the torn photo of Ellie with Tom and Fred at that stupid fair, three weeks before he met her. Minutes, maybe even an hour passed before he was absolutely certain that he had every last detail committed to memory. Then he stuck it on the mantel next to the photograph of his daughter. He tried to imagine them all together, maybe going to the beach, or simply him bringing her home to Ellie.

_Home_.

Even after making amends with Iris, Ellie and her boys were still closer to _home_. But as his final forty-eight hours ticked by, Alec realized that Keira was the only place he’d truly call _home_. She was a stranger, she despised him, and she was better off without him; but he knew that she’d be the last thought that passed through his mind, and the one thing that was still in his heart when everything else had stopped. He wasn’t sure about an afterlife and he honestly didn’t care, but he knew with an inexplicable certainty that there would come one second before this life ended, when he’d _see_ her. Alec was willing to do anything to get that moment, even if it meant dying.

Alec removed the creased photo of Ellie, Tom and Fred. Iris had chosen and arranged those framed pictures with care, and it was _her_ heart and home that was on display, even if he figured so prominently in it. She wouldn’t want Ellie there, but Alec couldn’t think of anywhere else where he felt safer leaving that piece of his heart behind.

He opened the frame of the picture of Keira and slid the photo of Ellie and her boys behind it. After a moment, he took out his wallet and tucked something else in there too.

*

He had forty-two hours left, when he broke down and called Ellie. She picked up on the second ring.

“ _You better have a bloody good reason for ignoring me again_ ,” Ellie hissed, but she wasn’t as angry as she’d been five days ago. He’d sent her a few texts each day in response to all the phone calls he’d ignored. Each text contained at least six words that said nothing about a surgery or another attempt at a goodbye that he kept putting off.

“ _Alec? Are you alright?_ ”

Alec took a deep steadying breath. Technically, it was only one word, but no one could really _say_ that in two syllables and one breath. He’d kissed her; he’d snogged her; he’d spent whole days and nights with her; he’d taken her on dates; he’d slept with her and he’d told her that he loved her. “Goodbye” had been in every touch, and every kiss, and every glance, but he hadn’t even come close to expressing _everything_. It was a stupid phrase that people said all the time, but it had taken on a different meaning the day he decided that he didn’t want to leave her. He needed to voice it before his forty-two hours were up, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.  

“ _Alec?_ ” Her voice was softer now. He hadn’t said a single word to her, but she could sense that something was wrong. “ _Alec, are you still there_?”

“Yeah, I’m still here,” he answered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He wouldn’t be for much longer though. _Forty-two_. Forty-two more hours of pacing in an empty house that contained a wall of memories and too many ghosts of his past. Alec glanced at that timeline of his life and turned his back on it.

“ _What’s going on Alec?_ ” Ellie’s voice shifted pitch and Alec wanted nothing more than to hug her. He opened his mouth again, but he didn’t have the courage to say it. Instead he selfishly reached out to her.

“You have my coat.”

There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the line.

“I want it back,” he told her. Ellie hesitated, and then surprised him with a husky voice that sent a thrill through him and a thousand images.

“ _It looks better on me_.”

“I know, that’s why I want you,” Alec said without thinking. His mind had gone straight for the gutter and Ellie sniggered. “I mean I want my coat,” he stuttered. “Not that I don’t want you too, but that stupid coat...” It wasn’t a stupid coat; it symbolized so much more than a silly garment. “Shit.” He pinched the bridge of his nose hard until his eyes stung with the reminder of what he’d called to do. “Ellie, I need that coat back.”

“ _You can come get it_ ,” she urged him, “ _I’ll make you dinner tonight, and you can spend some time with the boys-_ ” Alec wanted to escape; he wanted to forget; and he wanted to be at that table with them like a _family_.  He wanted it so badly that he went into the kitchen and actually reached for the keys to Iris’ car. There was a keychain, a pretend skeleton key with “London” engraved on it that Keira had purchased as a souvenir for Iris on a trip to the city.

The tarnished key lay in the palm of his hand and Alec remembered why he couldn’t stay with Ellie and her boys. Running away wouldn’t solve anything; it would only prolong the inevitable and make things more unbearable for everyone in the aftermath, particularly Keira and Iris who were and always would be his _family_. He returned the skeleton key to the hook, along with the house keys to a home he’d been locked out for the past three years. It had been so long that Alec didn’t know which key it was or if the locks had been changed, so that he couldn’t go back even if he’d tried.

“ _Alec, I know you said you’re tired, but you can still sit at a table_ -”

“ _Ellie_ ,” Alec interrupted her, his voice breaking, “I can’t-I can’t go home with you. I’m already-”

“ _Don’t tell me you’re in the hospital again_ ,” she interrupted him, her voice so loud and close to the speaker that he winced.

“I’m not.” Not yet. In forty-eight hours he’d probably be in the hospital’s morgue. He paced into the sitting room. “Ellie, I need my coat by tomorrow,” he said in a rush.

“ _Alec, I’m working_ ,” she reluctantly informed him. 

“All I’m asking for is five minutes. You can take a lunch. I can talk to Worthington. I just need to see you for a second.” He started coughing.

“ _Calm down, Alec._ ” She struggled to placate him and herself at the same time with a soothing voice. “ _Just breathe, alright,_ breathe.” Alec tried, but he felt stifled by that room, and all those pictures staring at him. He’d let them all down and grown so far away from the people and the man in those photographs that he didn’t even recognize himself. Ellie was the only one who didn’t know that man and who wouldn’t judge or compare _him_ with the broken man he’d become.

“ _What about this weekend?_ ” she asked.

“I’m going to Glasgow with Iris,” he lied. He couldn’t tell her where he was actually going because no one could accurately answer that question. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Ellie was silent on the other end of the line. She suspected that he was lying, but she didn’t know why, and she didn’t know enough about Iris to call him out on it.

“Ellie, _please_ ,” he pleaded. 

“ _Fine_ ,” she said, “ _You’re taking me to lunch tomorrow_.”

That was more than enough for him.

“I’ll take you to the ocean,” he said as the air became clearer around him. He breathed more easily just knowing he’d have another half an hour with her. “Can you meet me in South Seaburg?”

Ellie hesitated again, but South Seaburg was on the water and close to both Sandbrook and Edgewood.

“ _Alright_ ,” she agreed.

Alec told her where to meet him and Ellie told him when she’d be there.

He hung up and went for a last stroll down to the pond that used to be a home for the ducks and Keira. And as he sat there on that bench, Alec realized that he would’ve given anything to be able to go back to one of those days when his daughter was small and start over. Even if it meant that he never would’ve met Ellie, Tom and Fred.

*

That night he had dinner with Marty and Iris, but there was too much pity in Marty’s eyes. Iris was blind to it, but Marty and Alec both knew that he wouldn’t survive that surgery. Marty even took Alec aside to reassure him again that he would look after Keira and Iris. Alec clasped his shoulder, too overcome to thank him. Iris had tea with him, seemingly confident and calm, but she eyed him as if he was going to disappear any second. He heard her cleaning all the bedrooms and the loo upstairs, staying up later than she usually would because she was so anxious. She left his room untouched but he never went to bed.

It wasn’t unusual for him to sleep on the sofa, so Iris didn’t think anything of it. His bag was already packed. He stepped outside to the back stoop where he’d often watched Keira play in the yard and the neighbour’s bordering field. Princess was waiting for him. He’d secretly fed the mongrel scraps for the last four nights, and tonight Alec gladly gave him a chicken leg that had been reserved for Marty.

The wind picked up and a crescent moon peeked in and out of the clouds overhead. He wondered if somewhere Ellie could see that same moon or if his daughter might lift her head to look up at it. But he didn’t know where or even who his daughter was anymore. Alec caught glimpses of stars and a sky that wasn’t nearly as endless as the one over Broadchurch. He missed it. Closing his eyes, he thought he could still hear the sound of Ellie’s laughter as they’d stumbled their way back to her cottage. The cliffs didn’t loom over him, he’d already made the long exhausting climb and he was right on precipice and ready to fall. He wasn’t as afraid as he’d once been, but he still feared for the ones he loved and had to leave behind.

Princess nuzzled his leg and began to lick the salt from his hands and wrists. He hadn’t noticed when he’d started crying or when he’d stopped. He finally stood up and turned his back on that yard for what could be the last time. Princess whined and wouldn’t shut up. The beast would’ve sat there whimpering all night if Alec hadn’t opened the door for him. At least that’s what he told himself, as the dog slipped through the widening crack and scurried into the house.

“ _Bloody idiot_.” 

Alec didn’t kick “bloody idiot” out, but he grabbed the tea towel and tried to clean some of the grime from the mutt’s filthy coat. He had to toss the tea towel in the rubbish bin and he had scratches all up his arms, but Princess curled up on the Oriental rug beside the sofa and kept him company and distracted. Alec would’ve rather had his daughter with him or anyone else that smelled more pleasant, but Princess didn’t snore and Alec fell asleep petting a dog he’d made very happy.

*

The next morning both Alec and Princess were gone, but there were paw prints in the kitchen and the sitting room smelled like _dog_. Iris was furious and frightened.

Frantically, she called Marty.

"He disappeared, Marty, he's not here." She was panicking but she couldn't stop. "Where could he have gone?"

" _I don't know_ where _he went, but I'll bet you twenty quid I know_ who _he’s with_ ," Marty wagered. Iris knew that he was right.

" _He’ll be there, Iris, he just needs some time_.”

"I know," Iris sighed and inwardly cursed that damn woman. "If she sets him off again, I’ll kill her-"

" _Iris, you couldn't have prevented him from going to her, it was only a matter of time_." She knew that it was true, but it didn't make her feel any better. " _It's not Lucy's fault_."

"No, it's not," Iris agreed, taking a deep breath. "It's Ellie. Her name is Ellie."

Iris hung up on Marty and braced herself against the sink. If she failed, she knew she'd never be able to live with herself. But it was too late to back out now. It was all up to Alec and a woman who could jeopardize everything.

*

Months later, _that_ woman shines a torch on a photograph that’s been folded and unfolded so many times that it’s lined and wrinkled. The two girls from Sandbrook stare up at her. Only one of the girls is fully facing the photographer and they’re frozen mid-laugh, but Ellie feels like they’re both looking straight at her and that their eyes will follow her everywhere. Shivering, she flips the photo over and squints at the address scrawled on the back. Then she peers up at the padlocked iron gate looming over her.

The rose left on her desk was only the beginning. After the arrival of the rose, Ellie accidentally left the Sandbrook casefile out on her desk. The next morning it had been reorganized, and certain documents had post-it notes attached that Ellie swore hadn’t been there the day before. It happened again and again. Her co-workers only noticed her distress, not the small additions and changes made to DI Hardy’s meticulously organized and detailed notes. No one cared who was leaving the post-it notes, but they harassed her about it and jokingly dubbed Ellie’s assumed prankster as the “office fairy”. Ellie still considers asking for the security footage of CID, but she already suspects what won’t be on it.

Their suspect in the Edgewood case, Fitzgerald, was an egotistical sociopath that had confessed to the murder of the two Sandbrook girls in addition to the girl from Edgewood. Ellie was able to prove that Fitzgerald hadn’t killed the girls from Sandbrook with a few notes from the “office fairy”. An anonymous tip, Ellie assumed was from him, gave them a new lead on the Sandbrook case itself; but they were nearing a dead-end and would have to turn it over to Sandbrook where it would be swept under the rug and buried.

Worthington didn’t notice or didn’t care about the “office fairy”; she was distracted and constantly fighting with the Sandbrook PD and Alec’s former colleagues such as Cooper and Vicky. But yesterday, Worthington had given Ellie a slap on the wrist because her “office fairy” had put something in the file that she couldn’t explain to their CS. Afterwards, her DI had apologized and told her that they no longer had a reason to keep the case open. Ellie had taken out her frustration on her “office fairy”, leaving a nasty post-it note, telling him to stay off her case. Feeling silly and embarrassed, she went to remove it this morning, but it was gone and the photo she now holds in her hands was in its place. There had been a copy of it in the file, but Ellie knows that this is the original.

The gate was locked hours ago, but after kicking and rattling it and cursing, Ellie moves on. She should wait for daylight or chalk this up as someone’s idea of a sick joke, but there’s something that compels her to follow the iron fence until it ends and the stone wall begins. It’s low enough that Ellie can hoist herself up and over it. She lands on both feet in the damp grass on the other side and curbs the urge to swear on hallowed ground. Picking up her torch, she shines it on the rows and rows of stones that are assembled in front of her like the filed ranks of a quiet army. According to the writing on those stones, everyone in here is dead except for her.

But as the wind picks up, Ellie knows that she’s not alone.

The darkness closes in around her as she walks through lines of stones that tell sad stories she doesn’t want to hear. In spite of the chills running down her spine and the whispers on the breeze, she goes deeper into the heart of the cemetery and further away from the street lights and the entrance. She combs through the stones but she doesn’t know what she’s searching for. She’s about to give up and go home, when she suddenly stumbles upon what he’d wanted her to see.

Two tea lights shine on a pink granite headstone, brightening the family name. She almost walks by it, and that’s what makes her stop and finally understand.

Ellie kneels down in front of a potted plant and some fake Gerber daisies that’ll defy the cold. There’s a fresh bouquet of flowers the same shade of pink as the one Alec had taken such pains to remove from a thorn bush for Danny’s grave.

Lifting her hand, she reverently traces the name and the dates of another life that was tragically cut short, but never forgotten.

“Oh, _Alec_.”

He’s watching her from somewhere nearby. She can sense him in the air around her; an almost tangible presence that shadows her and the rock that anchors him to this spot. Tears wet her cheeks and the pinpricks of light burn and blur in front of her.

“I’m so sorry.”

Even after all this time, he can’t let go. A part of him will always be _here_.

And it’s her fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep in mind my Sandbrook is AU and totally bullshit because S2 didn’t exist, I didn’t read the book, and I had forgotten a lot of the details of S1 when I came up with some of this stuff. I wasn’t expecting such a positive response to the last chapter and I can’t thank you guys enough! Hopefully, you’ll stick with me!


	42. One More Day of Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MY VERSION OF THE SANDBROOK CASE IS AU! IT WAS WRITTEN BEFORE S2 AND ALL THE CHARACTERS AND CIRCUMSTANCES (WITH THE EXCEPTION OF CATE AND THE LOSS OF THE PENDANT) ARE DIFFERENT!
> 
> Thanks to all of you that left kudos, comments and reviews. It meant the world to me. As many of you know, two years ago I lost a loved one, and her loss shaped this heart-breaking story. She was beautiful, funny, bold, and she owed her incredible life, her amazing strength, and her horrible death to an organ transplant that couldn’t last forever. In her memory, I beg you to consider becoming an organ donor or donating blood. On that note, this chapter is OC, all over the place and very messy. I kept thinking of the worst day of her life and trying to remember the best. I tried so many times to rewrite this, but I just… I just can’t. Do me a favour and tell someone you love them.

Another day had dawned. Sunlight peeked through the fog that hugged the river banks and rose like steam from the green fields and blooming meadows. On the outskirts of Sandbrook, a ghostly mist crawled over hallowed ground; hovered and curled around stones like smoke and seeped slowly back into the depths from which it had arisen.

Alec shivered; it was a haunting reminder of why he’d avoided this place for so long. The gate was locked, but that meant absolutely nothing to the local gang of teenage hoodlums. Much to his chagrin, Alec had been forced to book some of their most illustrious members for trespassing and illegal substance abuse. It was practically a rite of initiation in the Sandbrook community. 

Kicking a beer can, he followed a trail of broken glass and cigarette butts to the end of the fence and the beginning of a high stone wall. Climbing the wall was part of the kids’ silly ritual, but there was a beaten path through the bordering woods that looped around to another gate that was never locked, because it was always broken. The rusty hinges groaned, but the gate gave way, and he stepped into the cemetery for the first time in over a year. 

In the months that had followed the burials, Alec had visited this place religiously. But his failure and his unfulfilled penance had gnawed at him, and when he’d stopped seeing his daughter, he’d stopped coming to Sandbrook altogether. It didn’t matter how much time had passed though, Alec could’ve sleepwalked to those graves, and he often did in the nightmares that had plagued him for the last three years.

Alec found Molly first. The pink granite headstone stood out in a sea of greys, white and black. Molly’s loved ones regularly visited the grave and took care of it. In addition to the fresh bouquet of pink Gerber daisies, there was a potted plant flourishing beside her headstone and a mason jar with an arrangement of silk flowers. Someone had placed two tea lights underneath Molly’s name, so that the grave would always be visible, even in the darkest hours. Alec stayed for a few minutes before he moved on to a non-descript stone buried in the monochrome lines.

Phoebe’s grave wasn’t pink and her name was listed below three others in the same small print. A tattered miniature flag declared her grandfather as a decorated veteran of World War II, but that was the only bright spot. Alec almost stepped on the scattered remains of a dried up bunch of bluebells, and someone had stuck an ugly fake lily in a vase that looked suspiciously like a wine bottle. Alec wished he’d returned sooner. Molly had been the daughter of a local politician, and had been an all-star athlete popular with her teachers and peers. It was Molly that most people remembered when they thought of Sandbrook, not the shier Phoebe whose mother was an alcoholic, and whose father had left her and the country soon after Phoebe’s death.

Alec knelt in front of Phoebe’s grave and laid down a cheap bouquet of flowers he’d purchased at the Market. He hadn’t decided to make the trip to the cemetery until he spotted the buckets of wilting blossoms. The flower display had been strategically positioned by the exit for the purpose of mainly men who had forgotten birthdays or anniversaries. Alec had forgotten something important too: _her_.

Pressing his palm against the stone, he told Phoebe the same thing that he’d told Molly.

“I gave you my word that I would find whoever did this,” he whispered and closed his burning eyes. “ _I’m so sorry_.” He opened his eyes and sketched the letters of a short life he’d failed, but he’d tried so hard not to forget. “Someone else is going to finish this and get justice for you and Molly, I swear.”

A lump formed in his throat and a coughing fit followed. Struggling to his feet, he prepared to leave her.

“They won’t forget you,” he vowed. It would’ve been an empty promise, but Alec knew that Ellie would never forget them.

*

Ellie forgot the coat.

For the last week, her nightmares had been awful; a variety of scenes that all ended with Alec’s heart stopping. That morning had been the worst. Ellie had dreamed that they were back in the hospital and that Alec had died screaming for his daughter. The sound of her alarm had nearly given her a heart attack. She’d thought that it had been Iris calling to inform her that Alec had died. 

Ellie kept her mobile with her at all times and jumped whenever it rang. Today, she lunged for her phone and spilled her coffee all over her computer. Mortified, Ellie apologized profusely to the kind bloke from IT that arrived to replace it. Another phone call startled her, and Theo brought her a cup of tea. He’d seen her face when she’d answered and he knew.

“It’s the waiting, that’s what kills you,” he said sympathetically. Then he quietly finished hooking up her new computer and left.

The wait would be over soon, very soon.

Ellie dumped the tea and knocked off early.

*

South Seaburg had once been a cosy village nestled in a scenic cove, but over the last three decades it had doubled in size and population. Nevertheless, the bustling seaside town reminded him of Broadchurch, but almost everything did these days. Beaches, the ocean, the sky, the sun, a laugh or a smile, random women and children in the street; they all made him think of Ellie, Tom and Fred.

And Keira was everywhere.

He’d chosen a safe place to spend his final hours; the Setting Sun Inn was within walking distance of Wilson Memorial. He desperately needed time to _breathe_ before he went in for the surgery, but the close proximity of the hospital would reduce the risk of him running any further. He wasn’t a flight risk. He was so exhausted; he’d finally reached the end of a long and winding road.

Gazing out over the water, he knew that he was in the right place, but it didn’t make it any easier or any less frightening.

In less than an hour he’d see Ellie for the last time and he didn’t know how or if he could say goodbye to her. He’d have to lie to her, it was the only way she’d let him go. She’d pressured him to get the pacemaker regardless of his chances, but she’d witnessed enough to know better than anyone else that his heart wouldn’t withstand another knife. She would’ve made the best of whatever time they had left together. And he still wanted it. A few more minutes, hours, days, weeks, months… It had to end at some point, though, all lives did.

Some might have considered it lucky to know the exact date and time of their death. All his affairs were in order, and in his forty-two years, he’d had a career, he’d found some justice in the world, he’d had a happy marriage years ago, and he had a beautiful daughter because of it. And then he’d found a second home, a second chance and a reason to _live_ again. Even with all the mistakes he’d made and all the suffering he’d endured and caused, many that lived decades longer than him couldn’t say that. He’d had a chance, many chances to say goodbye, but Keira had passed right by him and he lost her all over again. He yearned to hug her and tell her how much he loved her, but Iris would explain after he was gone and they’d take care of each other. He believed that if he did this, it would heal their relationship and repair and strengthen the family that he’d destroyed.

Alec checked his watch and calculated the hours and minutes that remained.

Twenty-one hours. Twelve hundred and sixty minutes.

“Alec?”

He turned around and his heart skipped a beat. Her hair was in disarray from driving up the coast with the windows rolled down, the leather strap of her side bag was twisted in her collar, and there was a coffee stain on her lavender blouse. She was a mess, but she was breath-taking.

“You look pretty,” he complimented her.

“Bloody liar,” she snorted. Stooping, she touched up the makeup around her eyes in the window of a Mercedes parked in front of them. “I haven’t slept in-” She broke off as Alec moved behind her to untangle and straighten the strap of her bag. Their gazes collided in the glass and Ellie faced him.

Standing this close to her, Alec could see every frown and worry line, every crack, and every crevice in her masked face. She was wearing too much makeup, but not enough to hide the bags and bruises beneath her eyes. Not from him. His hand lifted halfway, his fingers furling and unfurling, itching to erase the evidence and soothe the pain.

“How’s your head?” she inquired.

“Fine, all closed up, can’t even see it,” he assured her, tilting his head so that she could verify it. The bandage had been ripped off and the cut had healed nicely. It was nothing more than a scab. But it still hurt when Ellie’s fingertips grazed the sensitive new skin and a deeper wound beneath it. He inhaled sharply and she cringed.

“Sorry,” she apologized, biting her lip.

Alec shook his head.

“No, Ellie, I’m sorry,” he sighed.

Cupping her tense jaw, he brushed the pad of his thumb over her lower lip until her teeth released it. He only meant to ease the tension, but his thumb swept over the indent to the corner of her mouth. Her lips parted slightly, her brow furrowing; but Alec concentrated on tracing the curve of her thin upper lip. Mesmerized, he memorized the shape and feel of her mouth, the warmth of her breath and the twitch and curl of her painted lips as she tried to hold her tongue.

“You’ve got a bit of lipstick there.” Clearing his throat, he pointed to a pink smear at the edge of her mouth where he’d smudged it. Ellie rolled her eyes and wiped at her face. Alec stuck his thumb in his mouth and sucked the lipstick off of it.

“You changed it,” he noted.

Ellie glared at him.

“It’s different,” he stammered as her eyes darkened and her hands fisted at her sides. He licked his thumb. “Good different,” he mollified, but he’d already stuck his foot in his mouth. Well, his thumb actually.

“You are so – so  _infuriating!_ ” Ellie exploded, and Alec was suddenly caught in the path of a sudden storm of her anger stirred by waves of hopeless grief and exhaustion. He was the catalyst and she was a hurricane, sweeping toward him. “You told me that you were _done_ and you wouldn’t answer any of my calls,” she smacked his arm, “and then you just expect me to drop everything and come here!” Alec backed up but Ellie followed. “And now you’re looking at me like _that,_ ” she pointed to his face, “and you’re doing _that,_ ” she grabbed his raised arm, roughly yanking him toward her, “and you’re – you’re making me so _mad_ that I could-”

She cursed and kissed him. It was a quick hard press of her lips to his, but Alec was more than willing to seize the opportunity to deepen the kiss and to memorize her mouth from a much more enjoyable angle. It helped that this time he could use his tongue. He tried to take control and tried to slowly catalogue and focus on every minute detail; her teeth nipping and sucking on his lower lip, her tongue sliding over his, the tea on her breath and the taste of _her_. But she was so bloody _distracting_ ; making that breathy sound in the back of her throat, raking her fingernails over his scalp, and demanding for more friction and less space between them.

They broke for breath, and she told a catcaller to piss off with her teeth bared and her hands possessively clenched in the front of Alec’s Oxford; because right now they didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone but each other.

“You’re amazing,” he panted.

“I know,” she agreed and they picked up where they left off.

And then his hands were all over her; fastening in her floral smelling curls, squeezing her soft wondrous curves, and rucking up the hem of her silky blouse so that he could feel the heat of her skin one last time. Ellie bore down on him like an electrical storm, channelling almost a week’s worth of frustration into thoroughly snogging him as if she was determined to claim his last breath. His heart had to race to keep up with her, and the clock ticked louder and louder in his head with every strained beat until finally-

Ellie shoved him into the Mercedes Benz, hard enough to set the car alarm off.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Alec groaned, gasping for breath as the alarm screeched in their ears. Ellie panicked and tugged insistently on his hands.

“Come on, Alec, _come on_.”

Her voice faded out as he slowly slid down the car to the asphalt. Plastic in his hands, chalk on his tongue, the bitter medicine going down his throat, as the world rippled around him like water. The alarm was so fucking loud and his heart was hammering so hard in his chest.

“Can’t they shut that bloody thing off!”

Clapping his hands to his ears didn’t help; the sound went straight to his core and pain screamed through him with each throb. He shut his eyes, blocking the flashing headlights out; but the image of the ambulance outside the hospital slammed to the forefront of his mind. Tomorrow. He was going to die tomorrow. He’d walk into that hospital, strip off his clothes, lie down on a cold slab and never get up again. The reality strangled him and shook through him, making it impossible to breathe, to speak, to see or think about anything other than-

And then suddenly, something warm and soft blanketed him so completely that his mind was emptied. Ellie wrapped him up in her arms, muffling the noise with her hands and shielding him with her whole body, as she brought his head to her breast. She was holding him tightly, but loose enough that he could breathe more easily.

The screeching receded and finally stopped altogether. He heard a few mumbled words, someone approaching and leaving, but Ellie didn’t let go of him. She relaxed her grip, but stroked his hair and rubbed circles over his back. Finally, Alec was able to lift his head and look at her.

And she _knew_.

She didn’t know that he was going to die tomorrow, or that he’d taken the matter into his own hands, but she knew that today he’d say goodbye to her. They wouldn’t have had a frenzied snog in the middle of the promenade if she hadn’t sensed that this would be the last time they ever had the opportunity.

“Sorry,” he said, swallowing and sitting up straighter. They were wedged in between the kerb and the tire and Alec focused on the bright white line on the asphalt until his eyes cleared. He wasn’t sure if he could stand or walk away. His whole body was weakened from the attack, but more from the monumental weight of what he had to do before he could enter the hospital.

“Ellie, I um…”

With wide glistening eyes and a tentative touch on his cheek, Ellie willed him not to say it, not yet, not now.

“I – I like it,” he stuttered instead. 

“What?” Ellie blinked. She was a stunning disaster; mussed hair, flushed cheeks, swollen lips, and an untucked shirt. Alec committed the picture to memory. Then he licked his thumb, and scrubbed a smudge of lipstick from her bottom lip. 

“Your lipstick,” he clarified, “I really like it.” He wet his stained lips and nodded. “Nice shade.”

Ellie swatted his arm.

“You’re an incorrigible knob,” she gave him a watery smile, “but I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” he said and pulled her into his arms until they were strong enough to stand again.

*

Ellie cleaned herself up in the Ladies’. She automatically went through the motions of salvaging her makeup, even though it was pointless. She looked like shit, and Alec was going to make her cry before the end of the day. The moment their gazes locked in the glass, she _knew_.

Goodbye was in his eyes.

He’d told her he was going to Glasgow and that he didn’t know when he’d be back. But there was a lie in there somewhere, although god only knew what that woman Iris had planned for Alec’s final weeks. It was obvious from the healed cut and his clean pressed clothes that Iris was taking care of Alec, but Ellie didn’t trust her. She couldn’t trust Alec with the truth either. She’d trust him with her heart, her boys and her life, but not to tell her the truth about the extent of his illness. He treated her like she might break if he burdened her, because he loved her too much.

She wasn’t weak, and today she’d remind him of how strong she could be for the both of them.

Ellie didn’t understand that sometimes knowing _when_ to let go was harder than actually finding the courage and strength to do it.

Alec should’ve let go months ago, but Ellie was a weakness, a vice, a drug that killed him faster but made him feel better than anything he’d ever been prescribed. When she came out of the restroom, he stopped pacing and stared at her as if she was the answer to a prayer.

She had the divine power to alter Alec’s fate, and she never realized it.

“How much time do you have?” he asked. His eyes stroked over her as if he was so in awe of her that he thought she might disappear.

“Plenty of time,” she lied and he relaxed. Smiling uneasily, she took him by the hand, and unknowingly guided him through the final hours, before a heart-stopping moment tore them apart.

*

She smiled as she painted a picture for him of Fred and the spotted toad he’d sneaked into his Gran’s house last week. Alec was enraptured by her voice and her words, but he’d never really noticed the way she could talk with her hands too when she got excited. The story ended in laughter as Ellie told him that Fred’s Gran had called in half the neighbourhood to find the wee creature, after Fred let it escape. Alec’s wheezes changed to a wet cough that attracted the attention of the other people on the deck with them. The two women at the table beside them got up and glared at him, trailing the scent of anti-bacterial soap in their wake. Alec glowered at their backs. Ellie handed him two pills and flagged a busboy down for another glass of water.

“Sorry,” he apologized as she held his hand across the table.

“Will you stop saying that,” Ellie snapped, rubbing her thumb over his. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for, Alec.”

Technically, it wasn’t a date, but Alec wanted their last memory to be a good one. He’d carefully chosen a restaurant overlooking the ocean but he hadn’t looked at the menu; it consisted entirely of “exotic” over-priced seafood dishes, only half of which were in English. Alec had lost his appetite weeks ago, but the woman behind them complaining to the manager that something was _moving_ in her dish was enough to curb Ellie’s too. They both ordered a safe salad. Ellie hated salad. At least she thought the place was pretty and apparently it had scones. The busboy returned with a plate of iced scones instead of the water. Ellie politely asked for water again, but the busboy gave Alec a funny look and lingered at their table.

“What?” Alec snapped at the lad and he scuttled off to the bar. Ellie smacked his arm. “ _What_?”

“Don’t be rude,” she chided him. “Here, eat something before you bite someone’s head off.”

Alec wasn't hungry but Ellie kept pushing the bloody plate toward him. He stopped it from going off the edge of the table and absentmindedly picked at the other scone. He broke it in half, rubbed the tips of his thumb and index finger together, and then figured what the hell. Tomorrow he was going to die. A scone definitely wasn't anywhere on his list of choices for a last meal, but sharing a table with Ellie made everything better.

He bit into the scone and made a face. It was too dry and too hard, really hard. He almost chipped his tooth on a walnut. He tasted something metallic and gagged. Because it wasn’t a nut, it was metal. 

“Alec!” Ellie’s hand was on his back and her phone was out. Alec grabbed his serviette and spat the thing into it.

“’M fine,” he said dismissively, waving her off and coughing. “Choked on a-” His heart skipped another beat as he wiped it off and it _sparkled_.

“Did you order this?” he asked. His head was spinning, but he carefully polished the object, now securely tucked within the folds of the cloth serviette.

“No, I thought you did.” Ellie was genuinely puzzled. “What’s the matter with it? Oh, come on, Alec,” she huffed, rolling her eyes, “It’s just one bloody scone, it’s not going to kill you.” Her eyes widened as he set the serviette on the table between them. And then he unwrapped the small circular object that in many ways had built and wrecked both of their lives.

“ _This_ could’ve killed me,” Alec said as Ellie clapped a hand over her mouth. He didn’t touch it, but it lay like a hot glowing coal in the middle of the table.

“Are you asking me-?”

“Did you ask them to-?”

They sputtered and halted because it was ridiculous. Alec studied her shocked face. For a moment he wondered if things had been different…

He reached for the gold circle, holding it between his thumb and index finger. The sunlight danced over the facets of a large square-cut diamond. Their eyes met for a long moment.

“Well, this is unexpected.” He cleared his throat. “Ellie, I don’t know what to say.” Ellie’s fingers fluttered over her lips, as Alec made a dramatic show of shoving the engagement ring onto the appropriate finger. “It’s not really my style,” he whined, when the ring didn’t even make it to his knuckle, “But it’s about bloody time you got me a ring.”

“I was hoping you’d choke on it and die,” Ellie complained, playing along.

“I love you too, darlin’,” he deadpanned, “But I’m only marrying you on one condition.”

“What’s that?” Ellie wondered, raising her eyebrows. Alec demonstratively displayed his left hand and wiggled his fingers. 

“I’m not taking your last name, Richardson.”

Ellie lost it. Her face cracked wide open in an ear-splitting grin that could’ve lit the night sky. Alec’s heart soared with the sound of her carefree laughter. She sunk onto the table, banging her elbow on the edge and shaking uncontrollably. A fist in her mouth couldn’t smother the snorts or the giggles or her gasping voice.

“I bloody love you,” she laughed, heedlessly spilling those three words like the silverware that she accidentally knocked off the table.

“Spend the rest of my life with me,” he blurted out, seizing her hand. Ellie shook her head, barely hearing him, let alone taking him seriously. She thought that he was kidding, he wasn’t. He had less than twenty hours left and he wanted to spend them with her.

The tables around them were gawping, with the exception of one couple in the middle of an intense row.

“I’ll bet you twenty quid it’s them,” Alec said, nudging her and nodding toward the other pair hissing at each other.

“It’s definitely them,” Ellie sniggered as Alec waved to the nervous busboy hovering nearby. “I’ll bet you twenty quid they won’t last six months.”

“They won’t even make it to the altar,” he wagered as the white-faced teenager approached them. Alec didn’t know where to begin. He couldn’t look at Ellie.

“We didn’t order a scone,” he finally said and passed the plate to the busboy. The teenager glanced over at the bickering couple behind them, and his eyes popped out of his head.

“ _Fuck_ ,” the lad swore. 

“Wait!” Ellie grabbed his arm before he could rush off to salvage the mess. Chortling, she turned to Alec. “Alec, give me your hand.”

Alec still had the thing on his finger. Blushing, he tried to remove the engagement ring, but it got stuck.

“Hold still,” she ordered him.

Ellie held his hand in hers, and Alec was suddenly struck by the memory of his marriage. It had been the most important moment in his life, when he had bound himself to Vicky, trusting her completely and vowing to take care of her and their unborn daughter for the rest of his life. He’d given away most of his heart with a wedding band, similar to the one that Ellie was twisting off his finger. When Vicky broke her vows and removed that precious symbol, Alec had been disconnected and detached from everything, until he found someone who could heal the scar the gold circle had branded on his finger and his heart…

Alec clumsily tried to help her and Ellie giggled. His fingers trembled and for a second, Alec thought he could _see_ it. The two of them in a small kirk or a dingy registrar’s office; his fumbling hands and her teasing him; stolen glances and a quiet secret between them until someone noticed their rings. Maybe they hadn’t gotten it right the first time, but as Ellie flashed him a smile more dazzling than any diamond, Alec thought that if things had been different…

Ellie yanked the ring off his finger and the illusion shattered. She handed it to the poor busboy and told him to congratulate the “happy” couple. They watched the rowing pair with a strange sort of longing; they were so ordinary, and nothing was standing in the way of them spending the rest of their lives making each other miserable. Alec was only asking for an hour with Ellie, and he wasn’t going to waste another minute here.

“Come on.” He stood up and left a few extra pounds for the hapless lad who might get sacked for the disastrous mix-up. The other bloke was so busy arguing with his future fiancée that he hadn’t even noticed that the scone had never arrived, or that another botched proposal had taken place at a table less than fifteen feet away. Ellie passed her hand over his back as they walked out together onto the street.

“Would you have-?” Alec stopped himself, but too late. Ellie hesitated, and then grinned widely.

“Would I have put something in your scone, so you could choke on it and die?” She pretended to contemplate the idea.

Alec snorted.

“Well, you were _very_ cross with me the other day, and you've tried to kill me before,” he recalled, bumping her shoulder.

“You’re still not off the hook,” Ellie said, poking his arm, “But there are easier ways to kill you, and I wouldn’t waste a perfectly good scone or the money on a ring like that.”

“It was _ugly_ ,” Alec agreed, “I wouldn’t have married you unless you got me something with at least three carats worth of diamonds-” Ellie shoved him and he almost plowed into a passerby. She reeled him back into her side, and Alec wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“I would've gotten you something nicer,” he told her seriously.

“Four carats?” Ellie smirked, snaking her arm around his waist. Alec rolled his eyes.

“You wouldn't have married me anyway,” he sighed.

“You don't know that,” Ellie said softly, and Alec's heart skittered in his chest. He stopped abruptly and pulled her around to face him. 

“You want to marry me?” he asked her, wide-eyed.

“No,” Ellie refused him and Alec let go of her. It was absurd, but it still hurt. Paling, she reached for his hands. “Not – not now,” she mollified, “But maybe if you stuck around until Christmas…” she trailed off hopefully and Alec swallowed hard. “Besides, I would have to marry you in order to inherit your money,” she went on lightly with a forced smile, “Or I could've pawned the ring…”

“You wouldn't have gotten much,” Alec said, thinking of his mother’s simple ring. He was startled that the idea of it on her finger had surfaced so quickly. Iris had saved it for Vicky, but Vicky had picked out a ring for herself. And if Keira had wanted it, Iris would’ve already given it to her.

“It would’ve been more than enough,” Ellie assured him, squeezing his hands, “I never asked for much, all I wanted was for you to stay with us.”

Alec glanced down at their linked fingers and brushed his thumb over her bare ring finger that bore the same invisible scar as his own. He tried not to think of the lucky bloke that might be given the privilege of putting a ring on her finger.

“I hope someone takes care of you,” Alec said softly, “I know you can take care of yourself and that you’ll be happy with the boys, but I don’t want you to be lonely. You deserve a second chance.” They couldn’t erase the past, and he’d said it a hundred times, but he wanted her to be as happy as she’d been before, and he wanted her to have it all again. He hoped she’d find a partner who would love the boys, and keep her warm at night, and heal the scars that he and Joe had left behind.

Ellie gazed up at him with tears in her eyes as he reluctantly released her fingers one at a time. They had reached the end of the seawall, and Alec wondered if this was the end of the road for them too. The beach stretched beyond the wall and a rocky jetty jutted out to where the wide ocean met the never-ending sky, but he could see the roof of Ellie’s car from here.

“Do you want me to walk you to your car?” He didn’t recognize his own voice because it was so hoarse and his accent was so thick and heavy with that unsaid goodbye. Ellie shook her head and he curled and uncurled his restless hands.  

“Do you want to keep going?” He didn’t know how much time she had and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know; but he desperately wanted her to stay with him for the rest of his life.

Ellie smiled, and Alec felt the pleasant warmth of a summer morning, before the blazing and scorching rays and the uncomfortable heat that accompanied the passage of time. It was already mid-afternoon, but Alec felt as if Ellie had poured a few extra grains into his hourglass.

“Come along, Hardy, you promised you’d take me to the ocean,” she reminded him, her eyes sparkling. For a half-second they were back in Broadchurch at the beginning of a happy night that had ended in snogging on the beach and laughing and stumbling into bed with her. Alec blinked and the image was gone, but the woman who stood here now was stronger and lovelier, and so much more incredible than anyone he’d ever met.

“Okay, Millah,” he conceded, his lips contorting into a thin-lipped quivering smile, “We’ll go wherever you want.”

“Anywhere?” Ellie lifted her brows as he took one of her hands between his.

“Anywhere,” he lied, pressing her hand to his failing heart. Today, that dying organ would only beat for _her_. Her smile flickered, she understood.

Alec reverently kissed the back of her hand, as if she were one of those princesses and queens his daughter used to aspire to be. He wished that Keira could’ve met Ellie; a woman with wild curls askew and a stained blouse, a woman greater than even the most powerful, bravest and gracious queen in those silly cartoons and films. Drowning in Ellie’s brown eyes, he tried to tell her everything; how much he loved her and the boys; how worried he was about his daughter; how frightened he was; how he hoped that they’d forgive him. He wrote the words into her skin, kneading them into the heel of her hand and drawing them into her thinly veiled veins.

_I love you. Don’t let me go. Please, don’t leave me. Please, don’t go._

Nineteen hours and –

Ellie cradled his face between her hands and breathed a kiss over the scar that would never heal. But she gave him another borrowed breath, a few more minutes of bliss.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Alec followed her down the beach, up onto the jetty, and out over the ocean. And as his final hours spun away from him and they sat together right on the precipice of everything, Alec kissed her and tried to make the world stand still.

*

Time doesn’t stand still, but Anne Miller swears that in the moment she loses her grandbaby everything stops. Tom scored, and Anne cheered for him; standing and waving like an embarrassingly proud grandparent. He pretended he didn’t see her, but he’s glad she’s there. Fred loves coming to Tom’s matches too, fascinated by the game and the crowd. He worships the ground his older brother walks on, and Anne never needs to worry about him wandering off. Until suddenly, in the split second she let go of his shoulders to throw up her hands, he’s gone.

“Freddie. _Fred_!” Anne frantically scans the crowd and the field. She interrogates the parents and siblings sitting around them, asking if they’ve seen him, but they all shake their head. Anne’s already scrambling off the bleachers, calling out for Fred and searching for him. Her heart starts to race, sweat breaks out on her forehead, she’s on the verge of tears, she’s harassed anyone that looks like they might be in charge, and she’s torn between calling Ellie at work or the local police first. Less than fifteen minutes have passed, but it’s an eternity for an anxious grandmother who’s already lost a son and nearly lost her two precious grandsons because of him.

“FRED!”

“Granny!” a voice squeals and Anne chases the sound, running faster than she ever has in her entire life. She almost races past him because he’s sitting on a bench, content and giggling in a stranger’s lap. Anne stops in her tracks at the sight of him to catch her breath. Oh god, not again.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologizes to the bearded, spectacled man. Fred’s done it at least four or five times, but she still doesn’t understand why these strangers Fred attacks with misplaced affection never resemble Joe.

“Granny, look!” Fred hops down off the bench and holds out his hands, distracting her. Anne’s almost afraid to see what’s cupped inside of them. She breathes a sigh of relief because it’s not a reptile or an amphibian; but there’s nothing there at all.

“What is it?” she asks, very familiar with Fred’s expansive imagination, but he just grins as if it’s a secret.

“Daddy gave it to me,” he whispers, as they turn to the man now standing behind them. Before she can stop him, Fred throws himself at the older man and hugs his leg. He’s so deliriously happy that Anne doesn’t want to crush Fred’s delusion, and judging by the soft look the man gives him, neither does he.

“Sorry, he lost his Dad,” Anne tells the tall stranger in a low voice, knowing that it’s wrong to indulge Fred’s illusions and that this strange man could be a murderer or a pedophile like her son. But when he gazes at Fred and ruffles his hair, Anne hopes he’s not. The man raises his head to look at her and suddenly she understands.

“You lost a child,” she realizes, recognizing a sentiment in his scarred weathered face that she knows all too well. Joe had been estranged from her long before he ruined Ellie and his own son’s lives, but he was still her son. “How long has it been?” she wonders. He brushes Fred’s bangs back from his forehead and says nothing.

Fred tugs insistently on his arm and the silent stranger awkwardly kneels beside him. Fred whispers something in his ear and the man smiles. She’d assumed he was older, late fifties, but the smile transforms him into a man decades younger. He wraps an arm around Fred’s shoulders and Fred hugs him tightly. The lines, and scars, and shadows clear from the man’s worn face as a mutual contentment and calm spreads between a boy who lost his father and a man who lost his son.

“Wee Fred, be good for Mummy,” he says gruffly, and Anne immediately recognizes the heavy Scottish accent.

He’s the bloody postman that showed up that one time on her doorstep, and that wasn’t the first time Fred saw him or the last time.

“Remember what I gave you,” he growls, tapping Fred’s chest.

“Get away from him!” she snarls and snatches her grandbaby from him. Fred starts to scream and cry; wailing, kicking, squirming and reaching out for someone who can’t replace his father.

“Daddy! _Daddy_! DADDY DON’T GO!”

Anne turns back to threaten the bastard that hurt her grandbaby.

But he’s already gone. He’s vanished as if he was never there at all.

Later, Anne has a brief but heartbreaking conversation with Ellie’s sister Lucy that leaves her pale and shaken. She won’t tell Ellie. She won’t tell anyone. Tom shuts Fred up with a treasured blue rock from his collection, and Anne waits until she’s sure Tom’s out of earshot and Fred’s calm, before gently asking him what “Daddy” gave him.

Fred hesitates and then taps the front of his pajama shirt. Anne doesn’t understand until Fred stretches his palm out and touches her chest. He’s on the wrong side, but Anne’s heart melts.

“It’s love,” he says shyly, “But Daddy said I could share it with Mummy and Tom and anyone I want, so you can have some…” he offers generously.

“Thank you,” Anne’s so touched, she can barely speak. “I love you too, Freddie,” she whispers and kisses him goodnight.

Afterwards, she lies in bed and cries for Ellie, Tom and Fred, and the man who took away her only child so that he could keep her grandsons safe. And she wept for a stranger that somehow understood what Fred needed and was brought to him by some twist of fate. She doubts she’ll see the poor childless soul again, but every day Fred looks for him in the post or on the pitch. Fred stops telling her about his fantastical adventures with Daddy, and Anne thinks that maybe his imaginary friend has finally moved on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. I’m a mess. I can’t look at this anymore. It’s really hard for me to grasp that goodbye, when I’m not ready, and it’s very, very difficult thinking of how to live out a last day, when you’re sick and you’re viewing it from four very different perspectives. I hope you all have a fantastic week, and live at least one day as if it’s your last.


	43. A Storm Brewing in the Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU so much for your kind words and reminding me of why I’m still struggling through this shitty tribute to someone I want to remember. Just a friendly reminder, my version of the Sandbrook case is AU. Everything is AU.
> 
> Dear SEA, jumping across jetties in a hurricane probably wasn’t our brightest idea. But hell, we had a lot of fun, laughing and racing against the wind and the ocean. We were so _alive_. Sometimes if I walk out far enough or run fast enough I can almost believe that you’re only a step behind me.

A storm’s coming.

Darkness mantles the silent stones, but the wind carries chilling whispers of the past and the weight of restless wraiths. Trees bordering the cemetery creak and groan beneath the burden, their heavy branches violently swaying and swinging along the stonewall. The scrape of rusting metal cuts through the cacophony, a gate opens and shuts with a bang. Shadows approach, treading softly and brushing by her in the air, but they vanish as soon as she turns her head.

Ellie Miller might’ve been frightened of her imagination, but Ellie Richardson has experienced and seen enough _real_ horrors over the last years to properly rank her fears. Tonight, the cemetery is a volatile landmine of terrible secrets and she points her torch at one of them.

Phoebe’s grave sparkles with shards of glass. It’s a heartbreakingly shabby memorial to someone who died so young and tragically. Ellie toes aside the shattered wine bottle and a dried up bunch of bluebells. The cloying smell of tobacco emanates from ground up cigarette butts and ash, but the scent of rosemary is overpowering. It’s a bit weird that the headstone’s been sprinkled with a kitchen spice, but her grandmother had an herb garden, and Ellie recollects that rosemary is a traditional emblem of _remembrance_.

Ellie tries not to recall that Alec’s prime suspect Frost was an avid gardener, and that one theory included the use of gardening tools in the brutal beating and sexual assault of Phoebe and Molly. And she tries not to wonder if Frost or his mysterious unknown partner visits the grave; mocking and tainting the sacred ground with their filthy boots and hands, as they move freely amongst the living and remorselessly stomp on the dead.

Instead Ellie closes her eyes and tries to remember the man who haunts her because he couldn’t cage those monsters.

Ellie hugs Alec’s coat closer and breathes him in, imagining that his scent is present, not because she left her coat at the stationhouse and she can’t bear to return his. She pretends that she can hear his rough Scottish burr over the sound of the wind tussling with the trees, and fabricates the tentative touch of his hand on her shoulder in the storm brewing around her. The world is unstable, crackling with the energy of two fronts meeting, the pressure building to a point where the clouds will clash overhead and the sky will burst in a shower of cold tears.

He’s _here_.

She fights the urge to open her eyes, to look to her left, to throw herself at him - he’ll only disappear. Her body craves something tangible and _real_ ; the feel of his fingers trailing down the length of her arm, pausing at the end of her sleeve, hovering over her wrist. Her hand twitches, her fingers longing to reach out and entwine with a part of herself that she thought had been lost forever.

It’s nothing more than a ghost of a touch - his knuckles skimming over hers - but it’s enough to spark every nerve in her body and unlock a thousand memories.

It’s always the saddest memory that surfaces first, the one she tries to bury and ferociously guards from everyone, including her own self. But she can’t hide from it, not anymore.

Helplessly, she rewinds the last stretch of hours that they had together and watches as they unravel. She can’t stop them or change anything, but God knows that she tried. Tears well up in her eyes as she travels back to a summer day on the water; Alec gazing at her and then out at the horizon; weighing a stone and his whole life in the palm of his hand; pulling his arm back; and throwing it all away in shimmering ripples of water and sunlight.

*

The stone skipped multiple times before it sank in glittering blue waves tipped gold by an afternoon sun. Ellie lost count after the fourth bounce, blind-sided by Alec’s smile. His eyes gleamed with the reflection of the sun off the water and a happy memory of teaching his daughter how to skip rocks. She wished she could’ve met the little girl who could make him smile like that, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to meet the young woman who took it away. Another wave crashed against the jetty, spraying icy salt water into the air. His smile slipped off along with the curling foam that receded into the ocean.

“Have you seen her?”

Alec struck the cairn by their feet, scattering the construction of pebbles over the boulders. Ellie bit her tongue as one rocketed off a slab of granite and narrowly missed her shin. She shouldn’t have asked.

Crouching down, she picked up a few stones and shielded her eyes from the sun. An orange buoy floated and bobbed amongst the waves, a short distance from where Alec was standing. He kicked more pebbles off the side of the jetty and into the swirling eddies, drifting further away from her.

“I bet I can hit that buoy first,” she wagered, offering another stone to him.

Alec looked up blankly as if he’d forgotten she was there. He came back to her, blinking until the veil of shadows lifted from his face, and she was the only thing in front of him.

“What are we betting, Miller?” he asked, effortlessly tossing and catching the pebble in his palm. “Twenty quid? Fifty? My inheritance?” he quipped with an arched brow.

“I’ll tell you when I win, Hardy.” She smirked.

“We’ll see about that,” he said and leaned in as if he was going to kiss her. But he didn’t. Raking his eyes over her, he circled around her. Ellie should’ve been flattered that he couldn’t keep his eyes off of her, but it was unnerving how he gazed at her as if she were fading away, like a breathtaking sunset that was almost over, but you wanted to keep in your sight forever.

“Ready?”

Ellie wasn’t ready but she didn’t wait for him. She missed the mark. Alec barely hit it. Immediately, she threw a second pebble she’d hidden in her other hand, hard enough to make the bell on the buoy ring. 

“I win!” She crowed her victory.

“I hit it first,” Alec protested.

“My shot was better,” she argued.

“Millah, you cheated!” He stabbed a finger at her chest. Her eyes flitted to the destroyed cairn behind him.

“I bet I can hit your head,” she threatened. 

“You wouldnae dare,” he growled, challenging her with a twitch of his lips.  

Ellie lunged toward the rock pile but Alec grabbed her from behind. She yelped as he nearly swept her off her feet, putting himself between her and the arsenal. They wrestled with each other, Ellie laughing and Alec sniggering, until she squirmed free and barreled past him. Grinning, she jokingly scooped up the largest rock and spun around with it.

Alec was bent over with his hands on his knees. The stone dropped from her nerveless fingers as something sunk like lead into the pit of her stomach. He straightened his spine with a poorly disguised grimace.

“Alec.” She raced to his side.

“You missed,” he said and motioned toward the abandoned rock. “God, Millah, you’re rubbish at throwing,” he teased her, even as he struggled for breath.

“You’re rubbish at catching,” she volleyed back.

“Am I?” he asked her, his mouth curling upwards. “I thought you were a pretty good catch.” It was such a cheesy line, but the grin that spread across his face was like watching the dawning of a new day. His eyes brightened like the sky, crinkling at the corners; and it took her breath away. This was more than a glimpse of the lighter man he’d been in Sandbrook; this was a smile solely for _her_.

He lazily reached for her, sliding his arms around her waist as if they belonged there. She yielded to him, captivated by his rare smile.

“Gotcha,” he murmured and locked her in his embrace.

“That’s cheating,” she said weakly as he nuzzled her neck.

He chuckled, a warm breath that parted his lips as they rediscovered the spot near her pulse where he’d marked her several times. She trembled in expectation, encouraging him with a hand and a little pressure at the nape of his neck. He ghosted his mouth over his claim, but when his lips descended it was no more than an ephemeral touch; three whispered words against her skin that he engraved on her heart. Tears came to her eyes, as he turned away and rested his chin and more of his weight on her shoulder.

“You can keep my coat,” he said.

“Oh, shit, I forgot,” Ellie realized, “You can come get it anytime-”

“I like it on you,” Alec gruffly cut her off, pulling her as close as possible.

“But I-”

“Ellie.” His breath hitched as he threaded his fingers through her hair. “Keep the bloody coat.” 

“I’ll bring it the next time,” she promised, but her voice died with the last word.

“Ellie,” Alec said her name again and burrowed his face in the crook of her neck. “ _Ellie_ ,” he echoed the two syllables, and they sounded like a funeral dirge; a death sentence on his tongue. She shivered and clung to him, hearing the words he didn’t say.

_There won’t be a next time._

*

Eighteen and a half hours. One thousand one hundred and ten minutes.

Ellie led them past the cairn and out over the man-made jigsaw puzzle of rocks that gave one the illusion of walking on water. The path was rockier as the jetty narrowed. The boulders were rougher and slippery from the waves that had slammed against and spilled over the rocks in fountains during high tide. The tide had gone out, but Ellie was careful to avoid the damper and more treacherous sections as she talked about work. Alec listened, but spent less time watching his footing and more time staring at her. It was only a matter of time before he fell.

The sun hit her at just the right angle, haloing her unruly curls. With streaks of gold in her hair and fire in her eyes as she vented about her broken computer, Alec thought she’d never looked more beautiful than she did in this moment. She hopped a wee gap between the rocks and he slipped. 

His heart jolted in that half second he lost his balance, his foot snagging on the boulder. He barely caught himself, instinctively reaching for her. She almost went down with him, but she managed to pull them both up onto the higher slab, and they got his foot out of the crevice between the rocks.

"Are you alright?" she asked him, eyes wide. Alec flushed and nodded, but it took a few moments for him to calm his startled heart. Ellie went white, clapping her hands to her forehead. “Oh, god, I forgot how much you hate the water. I’ve been so daft, babbling on like an idiot. Let’s go back now.”

Alec frowned, realizing for the first time how far out his feet had carried him over the unfathomable depths of the ocean he’d once feared. It didn’t matter anymore. That phobia, all of his phobias, had been eclipsed by his terror of walking into that hospital tomorrow. Ellie wouldn’t be there to hold his hand, no one would be there. Death was something that everyone ultimately faced alone. But right now she was here.

He laced their fingers together and stroked his thumb over hers.

“I’m not afraid anymore,” he told her. The wind ruffled their hair and he brushed her curls out of her face. He kept his hand there, holding her hair back so he could study her brown eyes. He could see the end and a new beginning for her reflected in her shining irises, even if she couldn’t. They’d reached the end of jetty without either of them registering it.

There was literally nowhere else they could go. The ocean cruelly separated them from the seemingly endless horizon, making it impossible for them to move on. They could only go back. Alec refused to look behind him, keeping his eyes on Ellie and the never-ending sky stretching beyond her.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said, his voice raw. He inhaled sharply. “But Ellie, I need to…” he trailed off. It was too much for his heart. He stumbled to the edge of the jetty, where the rocks stopped altogether and the ocean began.

He sat down on the precipice, and after a moment, she did too.

He focused on the distant white sailboat he’d ranted about earlier for Ellie’s amusement, until his eyes were clear and his heart was more prepared. Then taking a deep breath, he reached into his pocket for the words he couldn’t say to her. 

*

Ellie leaned back on her hands and stared at Alec’s profile as he fidgeted with something in his pocket. Today everything seemed so much brighter beneath the hot summer sun, including Alec. The sun had brought out highlights of auburn in his brown hair and freckles in his pale face. It was too warm for a suit jacket and tie, and he was in charcoal grey slacks and a white oxford with the top three buttons undone and the collar wide open. She wondered if this was how he would always look in her memories, one of her last snapshots of him. 

“Here.” He offered her a closed fist and Ellie’s fingers instinctively opened beneath it.

“I knew you’d eventually get me a rock,” she joked, “But I wasn’t expecting it to be this big.”

Alec snorted.

“It’s for Fred.”

The rock was cerulean blue and polished. Obviously, it wasn’t something he’d picked up off the ground, or dug up in the dirt, or searched for on a beach. He’d purchased it or someone else had.

“Keira had a rock collection,” Alec told her as she turned the stone over in her palm. “She used to have hundreds of them squirreled beneath her bed and in her closet,” he reminisced nostalgically, “We made a garden in the backyard for them and boxes to store the prettier ones.” 

“Is this Keira’s?” she wondered.

“Got it in a gift shop, years ago, but she - she’d outgrown that phase…” He rubbed his neck and cleared his throat. “I found it in a drawer at Iris’, thought Fred might want it.”

“He’ll love it,” Ellie said, smiling, “But he would’ve liked it if you gave it to him in person.” Alec glanced at her longingly, but she could sense the insurmountable miles stretching between them. He wasn’t leaving with her, not this time. Ellie repeatedly rubbed her thumb over the glazed surface like a worry stone as Alec stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“I have something else,” he said, nudging her, “For Tom.” Ellie held out her free hand expectantly, but Alec hesitated. “He probably won’t like it, but I saw it, and it made me think of him…” He shrugged and put something sharp into her palm, no bigger than the pad of her thumb. Watching her anxiously, he tried to gage her reaction.

“It’s…” It was a little pin, one of those things that you put on the lapel of a nice coat or on a tie. Ellie glanced at Alec’s Oxford, noting how strange and vulnerable he appeared without a suit jacket and tie, even after seeing him so many times without them.

“He mentioned to me that he was a fan of Liverpool,” Alec explained, tugging at his earlobe. Ellie studied the tie pin and noticed the team’s crest. With the exception of Tom’s games, Ellie didn’t follow football, and Alec didn’t either.

“I know he won’t wear it now,” he stammered, “But maybe when he gets older, and has to go to some stupid formal thing…” Ellie suddenly remembered teaching Tom how to knot a tie, because his bastard father wasn’t there to do it. The memory was followed by Alec and Tom together, and Alec telling her how proud she should be of Tom; how proud _he_ was of Tom. A lump lodged in her throat and she fisted the pin in her hand.

“You don’t have to give it to him,” Alec nervously rambled on, scratching and tugging at his collar and the gap where his tie should have been. “It was stupid, but I wanted him to know that I was thinking of him too. I thought that I could give him something so he’d remember-” He broke off before his voice did.

Ellie leaned over and kissed his cheek.

“He’s not going to forget you, Alec,” she whispered. Alec shuddered. Her hands were full, but she rested her forehead against his temple. “We won’t forget you,” she promised and snaked her arms around him.

“Don’t tell them,” he said desperately, latching onto her arm crossed over his chest.

“Tom’s going to ask-” Ellie argued, but Alec twisted in her embrace, turning his wild eyes on her.

“Tell him I’m in Scotland,” he pleaded with her, clawing at her sleeve, “Tell him we broke up. I don’t care what you tell him just wait a few months, and it won’t hurt.” Alec stopped. It was already too late. He was _leaving_ her sons, right after they’d lost their father. A hot tear escaped her eye and Alec swore under his breath. Untangling himself from her, he abruptly stood up. He paced away from her with one hand on his hip and the other covering his eyes, but there was nowhere for him to go. Ellie was reminded again of a caged wounded animal, begging to be set free.

“ _Let him go_ ,” a voice whispered in her head.

The bell on the buoy clanged in the distance, almost as if it were marking the passing of another hour or perhaps a life. Two giggling young women were messing around in a kayak and had rammed into it, but to Ellie, it sounded like an alarm, warning her that a storm was on its way. She shivered as a shadow passed over her, although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Another storm was coming for them.

She could see it in Alec’s eyes as he hovered over her.

Something was _wrong_.

“You’re not going to run off with some redheaded Scottish lass in Glasgow,” she growled, forcing a playful possessiveness into her voice. She wagged a finger at him. “No shagging the bonny nurses.” Alec wheezed a laugh and stooped to kiss her crown.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he placated her, squeezing her shoulders before settling on the granite slab beside her. “’M not exactly a Casanova, you didn’t even notice when I flirted with you,” he reminded her, scowling and grumbling, “But I might pull some strings for a background check on this Techy Theo who’s wooing you with computers and tea.” Ellie rolled her eyes and swatted his arm. Only Alec would consider common courtesy as a courting ritual. His refusal to learn and follow social norms had irritated her, but now it was something amusing and endearing. She’d missed him, God, she’d miss him.

“You’ll come back though, won’t you?” she blurted, although she already knew the answer. They stared into the sun, but she heard his sigh. A minute of tense silence ticked past and then another. “Alec?”

He turned and looked at her. His eyes were watering from staring into the sunlit waters and the sea breeze coming in off the ocean. Ellie’s heart sank right into her stomach. He didn’t answer her and it hit her harder than anything he could’ve said. The realization knocked the breath right out of her and opened up a void inside her chest.

She searched the horizon for something to anchor herself too, but the sleek white sail boat he’d been complaining about earlier had shrunk until it had disappeared altogether. Ellie knew it was still there, somewhere beyond that horizon where the ocean met the sky, but it was gone. And soon Alec would be gone too…

The sun was burning her and the rocks were warming beneath them. The tide was out, the wind was dying down, and the sea wasn’t as rough as it had been when they first started walking. But all the blood in her body had frozen over with the unnatural chill that his silence provoked.

“You’re shivering, Ellie.” Alec moved over to rub some warmth back into her blood stream. “C’mere.”

Ellie scooted closer and he wrapped his arms around her. Her head dropped to his shoulder and he rested his atop hers. She was safely tucked into his side, encompassed in the warmth of his love, and she wanted to stay there forever.

She didn’t know how much time passed before he lifted his head again. The sun was still in his eyes and his pupils were pinpricks in his lightened irises. She wondered what he saw in her when he tried to comb his fingers through her mess of curls. He dipped his head and she leaned in until his face was so close that it was too blurry to make out any more. They held themselves there, their breaths mingling.

“You know, the first time you kissed me I thought time stopped for a moment,” she whispered.

“That’s ridiculous, time doesn’t stop,” Alec breathed against her mouth, but his lips were already grazing her cheek, her jawline and the corner of her mouth. Ellie closed her eyes and tried to block out the roar of the Atlantic and the light of day, both reminders of the world spinning around them. For one moment, she was back in a dark kitchen with one last daft wish she’d foolishly made for her birthday.

She kissed him. Alec’s arms tightened around her and her hand curved at the base of his neck, both of them gently urging each other closer. Time didn’t stop, but they almost managed to forget about it for a few pleasant minutes.

Alec broke away, coughing into his arm and shattering the illusion. Ellie rubbed her hand over his back until the last shudder went through him. They pretended that his eyes were glassy from coughing and hers were glistening because of the sun’s glare.

“I think it’s time we headed back,” he said hoarsely.

They helped each other up and returned to the shore, holding hands because they didn’t want to let go. Alec started dragging his feet when they neared the beach, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he was tired or reluctant to leave. Ellie jumped down from the jetty and turned to assist Alec. He was sitting on the flat rock above her, his long legs dangling over the edge.

“Do you have to go?” he asked her, and the catch in his voice pulled on her heartstrings.

“Not right now,” Ellie replied, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand and waiting for him to accept the other. He scratched at his jaw. 

“Do you have enough time to give me a lift to the hotel?” he wondered, shocking her.

Alec didn’t look up from his exploration of the expanding crack between the boulder he was sitting on and the one adjoining it. He hadn’t been very clear on why he’d chosen South Seaberg, but she got the impression that he was hiding not only from her but from Iris too. Ellie tried not to think about the other times he’d asked her to go back with him to a hotel, even though it was obvious just by looking at him and the noticeable difference a few weeks could make, that shagging was not what he had in mind.

“I’ve got plenty of time,” she told him. If there really wasn’t going to be a next time and this really was the _last_ time, she’d make time for him.

“Thanks, Miller,” he said, and Ellie felt the softness of his gaze caressing her, even though his face was shadowed.

Alec ignored her proffered hand and slid off the rock. He wobbled when he landed in the sand, but he stayed on his feet and began the short trek to the sea wall and the street where her car was parked. From behind, it was more evident through his thin button-down shirt that _all_ of his bones were more prominent and exposed. He had wasted away before her eyes, and death walked with him, waiting for the right moment. Ellie kicked herself again for missing the signs, when perhaps it wouldn’t have been too late to save his failing heart.

“Are you coming?” he snapped. Ellie scrambled up the beach to join him.

As she passed him, Alec rested his hand on her back, and then his arm was sweeping around her shoulders. Ellie wound hers around his waist. He kissed her hair and the top of her head, his lips lingering. She thought about how _right_ this felt and how perfectly they _fit_ , like two of the rocks that had been broken up and arranged together to create the jetty that stretched out into the sea. That jetty could support a seemingly impossible amount of weight without separating in the force of a strong current and an unrelenting tide. It had survived thousands of storms and had slowed the inevitable erosion of the beach that could destroy the entire town. But it wasn’t impervious; it would crack, it would break, and one day it too would be _gone_.

*

Seventeen hours. One thousand and twenty minutes. 

Time ticked away on his wrist and flashed with each subtle shift of the numbers on the dashboard of her car. It stalked him; counting down seconds in a blinking crosswalk sign; blaring through the radio he switched on and off; glaring at him from a digital ticker on a bank they passed. He drummed away a measly one hundred and thirteen seconds on his thigh before he gave into the compulsion to quiet the clock in his head.

They stopped at a red light in front of a sign for Wilson Memorial Hospital, and he panicked, reaching over the console for her. Ellie squeaked in surprise, but she lifted one hand from the wheel to his wrist, covering the face of his watch and steadying his heartbeat with a stroke of her thumb over his pulse. He kissed her until the driver behind them laid down on the horn and she giggled into his mouth. The light had changed and they moved on with the rush and flow of traffic and time.

She shook her head and smiled at him as he caught his breath, perhaps for the last time...

He wasn’t ready to let go, but the clock never stopped. The closer they got to the Setting Sun Inn, the harder it was for him to see it. By the time they pulled into the lot, his vision was swimming, his stomach was churning, and his heart was _breaking_. He couldn’t look at her, he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t move, he could barely breathe.

She shut the car off and she waited…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing about sports, but my best friend Google informed me that there’s a song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” that’s associated with the Liverpool F.C. team, so that’s why Tom’s a fan in this AU. Sorry for the repetition and the literal/metaphorical/structural “rockiness” of this chapter. I had to stitch scenes I wrote over the last four months with scenes I wrote in December, it never turns out the way I want it to. The next section I wrote in December/January too, but I’m sure I’ll find something moronic to fuss over for two weeks.


	44. Tears and Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I drafted this chapter in January, I’ve screwed up since then, but when I first wrote it, this was one of those scenes that would resonate with me…
> 
> Dear SEA, I didn’t know how sick you were or how brave you were or how hard you were fighting. But someone knew, you both knew, and I’m glad someone was there to tell you how _strong_ you were and that you could _let go_ …

The Setting Sun Inn had once been a cute little Bed and Breakfast, but the hotel’s renovations had robbed the place of its former cosiness. The new owners had made a valiant effort to modernize and preserve the Inn’s heritage, but everything looked and felt _wrong_ to Ellie. They’d been so stupid to think that they could freeze it in time and recapture something that had already been lost, but that never prevented people from trying.

Ellie glanced over at the man slouched in the seat beside her. His face was turned away from her, and he hadn’t moved since she shut off the car. Ellie fervently prayed she’d misread the look in his eyes earlier, but with each solemn minute that passed, the unsaid words sliced deeper into her heavy heart.

The sudden click of the seat belt startled her. Alec had unbuckled and was now staring at her.

“I got you something too,” he said and tugged at his earlobe. Ellie waited, watching his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “I um…” He cleared his throat. “I left it in the hotel room.”

“Are you trying to seduce me?” Ellie quipped as her nerves got the best of her. Alec groaned and covered his face with his hands. She chattered on autopilot, “That was a lot better than asking a woman to _relax_ with you or suggesting that I supervise you in the shower. You must be practicing for the lasses in Glasgow-”

“For God’s sake, Ellie!” Alec dragged his hands down his face, moaning, “You’re not making this any easier.” His chest was heaving, his face was flushed, and his eyes were suspiciously shiny. “Right now, I’d do _anything_ to forget for one fucking second that tomorrow I’m-” He broke off. His gaze was piercing and searing, but this was so much more than simple carnal desire. “Don’t tempt me,” he snarled. Climbing out of the car, he slammed the door hard enough to shake the whole vehicle.

Ellie sat there in shock. The knob had snogged her while she was _driving_ , and he had the nerve to accuse _her_ of teasing _him_. His moods were swinging so quickly that Ellie suspected it could be a side effect of the drugs. Abruptly, he opened her car door.

“Please,” he said, hovering uncertainly. It was one simple word, but for a quiet man it carried the weight of a thousand more. Swallowing, he held out a hand to her. “This won’t take long, I swear, I just need you to come with me...” His eyes were wide and fathomless, brimming with a raw vulnerability and so much _fear._

“I’m coming,” Ellie reassured him. She dropped her purse in her haste, and Alec picked it up for her. He swayed, steadying himself against the car, before he took her hand again.

Anxiety and discomfort were rolling off of Alec in waves as they walked through the hotel lobby. Every few seconds, he’d squeeze her hand or glance over to assure himself that she was still there. Everything about this – South Seaberg, the hotel, Alec, this afternoon – it all seemed so _wrong_ and frightening. Ellie wanted to kidnap Alec and lock him up in her house, but he was at the centre of this unsettling storm and somehow moored to this spot.

He almost brought them to the wrong room and he fumbled for the hotel key in his wallet. Ellie grabbed the key and flashed back to the Traders, but this was a terrible contrast to the excitement that had accompanied the moment when she’d opened the door in Broadchurch. Alec leaned against the doorframe and Ellie had trouble with the swipe. Her fingers were trembling as his anxiety transferred to her, seeping in through her pores. He was closing in on her, breathing down her neck, nosing her curls, and drinking her in with that soft caressing gaze. He wasn’t going to fuck her, but she wished he would so that they could forget, even if it was only for a moment. Today seemed so fragile, as if every touch, every glance and every word would be their _last_. 

Alec snatched the key from her and thrust it into the slot, nearly cracking it in half. His hand pressed into the small of her back and she stumbled into the hotel room. He shut the door behind them, tossing the key onto the side table and motioning for her to sit down on the bed.

“Drink?”

“No.”

“Right,” Alec sighed, propped a hand on his hip and plunged his fingers into his hair.

The curtains were open and the room seemed more open too. All of the other rooms had been shadowed; it seemed they’d always met in storms and darkness. Once again Ellie was struck by the light. This time it bleached him, stripping him down to a bloodless face with a dusting of freckles, and a white Oxford, sticking to his back with sweat. Her last memories of him would always be so blindingly bright and tainted with sunlight, like that hot spell in May when she’d dragged him into the cottage and into her heart. That had been the start and this… This could be the _end_.

The room was so white, wide, sterile and empty that it made it impossible for them to hide. Ellie felt exposed in the room and in the face of Alec, so unchecked and unguarded. His walls were rapidly disintegrating. His dark eyes were darting all over the place, his sleeves were rolled up, and his hair was sticking up from repeatedly running his fingers through it. Any second now he was going to start pacing or give himself a heart attack.

“You said you had something for me,” Ellie gently reminded him.

“Yeah, um…” Alec went to the desk. It was littered with newspaper. He hastily swept half of the paper into the rubbish bin. “Sorry,” he apologized, sheepishly. “It’s not much...”

And then he handed her the remaining bundle of newspaper. Ellie wondered if he’d finally gone mad as she read the crumpled headline of today’s paper. Alec perched on the edge of the desk and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Well, go on, open it,” he urged her, impatiently.

Ellie unfolded the newspaper he’d used as a sweet but terrible attempt to wrap the gift. She was confused when she peeled away the last piece of crinkled paper.

It was a chocolate bar.

“Happy birthday, Ellie,” he said. For a moment, she was convinced that the medication was making him loopy.

“I promised I’d get you a bigger piece of chocolate,” Alec explained, and it clicked. He gestured to the chocolate that was so much more expensive and larger, than the simple after dinner sweet he’d nicked from a restaurant, months ago. “On your birthday, that’s what you told me you wished for…” He’d _remembered_ , but he’d been so daft to think that this was what she’d wanted.

“I’m afraid I won’t be around for your next one.” He confirmed it, coughing into his fist.

Ellie couldn’t breathe. He wouldn’t be there for her next birthday; he wouldn’t be there for Christmas; he wouldn’t be there for Tom’s football matches; he wouldn’t be there to tuck Fred into bed; he wouldn’t take her on another date; and she knew that he didn’t intend to see her again…

“I broke every promise I made to you,” he apologized, bowing his head. “I couldn’t keep this one either, but I thought I could try…” he trailed off and their gazes locked again. His face fell and he rubbed at his neck.

“You don’t like it,” he said, cursing under his breath. “Sorry, I searched the whole bloody store.”

“I love it,” Ellie croaked. Her eyes were stinging, and she couldn’t swallow past the lump materializing in her throat. “Thank you,” she whispered as she neatly folded up the chocolate bar in the newspaper. She held onto that last piece of him, and wished he wasn’t such a lovable, thoughtful, stupid knob that was leaving her.

“I didn’t realize we were exchanging gifts,” she rasped. She slid the chocolate into her purse, squeezing it in with Tom’s Liverpool tie pin and Fred’s blue stone. “If I’d known I would’ve got you something.”

“Ellie.” Alec shook his head and uncrossed his arms. “You already gave me a gift.”

“What?” Ellie blinked up at him.

“ _Time_ ,” he said tenderly, “You gave me time.”

Her heart beat faster as he stared at her awestruck.

“All those days, nights, and hours we spent together. They were the best I had in years…” He forced a tight-lipped devastating half-smile. “And today, you gave me one _last_ day…” He clutched the edge of the desk, studying the carpet where her purse had fallen from her limp fingers. She had no control over her slumping shoulders or the slight tremor working its way through her entire body. She felt _numb_.

Seconds, maybe a whole minute passed before he found her gaze again. She swore her heart beat right out of her chest.

“Ellie, you gave me a chance to say _goodbye_.”  

This time it only took one word to _shatter_ her.

“This isn’t goodbye,” she protested as the tears welled in her eyes. She’d been prepared and bracing herself for it, but this fucking _hurt_. “You can’t leave.” Her voice was breaking up and her vision was swimming, but today Alec’s resolve was unbreakable.

“Ellie.”

“Not today. _Not today_!” she broke off with a whimper and bit down on her wobbling lower lip. Alec stood up, towering over her and filling the room with his deadly shadow.

“Ellie, it’s time,” he said softly.

She flinched. She’d fought so hard to keep him with her, she hadn’t slept in days, and she lived each second fearing it would be his last. They hadn’t been able to stay away from each other, and his pain had become hers. But they’d been battling this tempest for too long, and it had finally beaten them into the ground.

“I’m so bloody tired,” he told her. Ellie could sense it, feel it, see it, hear it and practically smell it on him. The room swelled with that finality; that defeat; that weariness and that mortality that suddenly felt so close, and so real, even though he was so very _alive_ in front of her.

“There’s still time,” she insisted, stubbornly wrestling with something that no one could beat once it got it’s claws into you. “You’ve still got time. We can still-” Her voice cracked as he said her name, stretching the syllables over his tongue in an accent that had annoyed her until he started saying her name like _that_.

“ _Ellie_.”

Her nails cut into her palms. She tried to focus on that pain instead of Alec, and what he was asking of her.

“Ellie, please,” he pleaded with her.

“I’m not giving up,” she argued, but she was crushed with the inevitable. “You’re not giving up. You won’t do this to me,” she said, shaking her head and ranting, “You’re not done. You _promised_ you wouldn’t leave me like _he_ did-”

“Ellie, I can’t fight this,” Alec interrupted her. There were tears in his eyes. He wasn’t Joe, he didn’t have a choice. “It’s out of my hands.”

“No, _no_!” Ellie hid her tear stained face. She heard him moving, and then her palms were torn away from her cheeks. Alec dropped to his knees, kneeling at her feet.

“You have to move on and let go,” he begged her, “because I don’t know how and it’s killing you and me.”

_Let him go_ , a voice encouraged her in her mind, _let go_. Ellie looked into Alec’s desperate face; the premature lines and wrinkles, the unhealthy pallor of his skin, the hollowness in and around his glassy wild eyes, and the first of many tears as wall after wall crumbled within his failing body. She couldn’t save him from his self-deconstruction, it was far too late. He _needed_ someone to tell him that it was _okay_ to let go now. Ellie didn’t want to be the one, but Alec had no one else.

“ _Alec_ ,” she whispered, and opened her arms to him.

Alec surged forward and kissed her. They were both crying now. Ellie’s sobs echoed through the room, until he engulfed her in his wiry arms and muffled the sound against his mouth. He tried to soothe her, and sought comfort in her at the same time. Burying his nose in the crook of her neck, he trailed tears and wet open-mouthed kisses down her jaw, her throat and her clavicle. Ellie peppered kisses over his crown, his forehead, his cheeks, and anywhere she could reach. Knotting her fingers in his hair, she tugged him closer and closer until he couldn’t kiss her anymore.  

He got up to take those bloody bitter pills again, and Ellie wept. Collapsing on the bed beside her, he pulled her head to his racing heart. She wondered if this time it would stop, but Alec was still strong enough to hold her and to rock her, and his heart was still strong enough to _love_ her.

“I love you,” he confessed. 

Ellie fisted her hand in his shirt and threw herself at him. A sob heaved through her entire body, shaking her right down to the core. She was losing a part of herself that she’d never find again in anyone else.

“Ellie, I love you,” he told her again. His voice was steady, and his body and heart were solid beneath her. He was certain this time; it wasn’t a flippant remark or something he said because he was dying. He’d realized it long before he’d said it and he _meant_ it.

Ellie pushed him down onto the bed and he caught her against his chest. Hushing her, he pulled them into a more comfortable position against the headboard.

“How much time do you have?” he whispered, skimming his lips over the shell of her ear.

“All the time you want,” she offered him.

“Just give me one more hour,” he pleaded as another one of his tears wet her cheek.

“Oh, Alec.” She sat up so that she could look at him. She brushed back his fringe, and wiped the tears from the shining tracks and the swollen flushed skin around his eyes. “One hour isn’t going to be enough,” she told him, breaking both of their hearts. Alec lowered his forehead to hers and gripped her hips.

“Two?”

“Three,” Ellie said, although she wanted to give him the whole bloody two months or however much time he had left. Judging by the way he was trembling in her arms and clinging to her, she knew that his time was running out a lot faster than that.

He leaned back and Ellie saw that terrifying look in his eyes. Cupping her face in his hands, he held her head in place and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs.

“Ellie, as soon as you leave this room, you have to move on,” Alec told her harshly, leveling her with a hard gaze. “You can’t call me.”

It was a blow Ellie had been dreading, but it detonated like a bomb inside of her. Shrapnel ripped through her insides as Alec went on.

“You can call that other number and I swear if you ever need anything she’s going to take care of it,” Alec promised. “But don’t call me. I won’t pick up.”

“ _Fuck you_!” Ellie snarled and feebly slapped her hand against his chest. “You tell me that you love me and then you - you – you-” She couldn’t find a word for him. Alec ducked his head lower. His fingertips pressed into her cheekbones and his arms started to shake. But his gaze and resolve were unwavering, in spite of the onslaught of tears assaulting them both.

“You have to let go of all of this,” Alec insisted vehemently, sniffling as a droplet fell from the tip of his nose, “You’re never going to move on if you keep calling me and I keep coming back.”

“For fuck’s sake, Alec, stop being so dramatic!” she spat, gasping between sobs, “You’re not - dead - yet-”

“Damn it, Ellie! Just fucking LET. ME. GO!” he exploded.

Ellie winced at the volume of his voice and almost shoved him off the bed. He released her, cursing, and ground the heels of his hands into his eyelids. Ellie swiped at her running nose and Alec surreptitiously wiped at his eyes. It made no difference. They stared at each other, so bloody exhausted and so irreparably broken. 

“Ellie, I-” He choked up, unable to finish. There was an apology on the tip of his tongue, and also a plea that Ellie understood but didn’t want to acknowledge. She inched closer and hesitantly stretched out her hand. Alec froze as she laid her palm over the fragile organ that would _always_ be hers, even after it stopped beating. 

“Alec, are you in a lot of pain?”

“Yes,” he admitted, exhaling heavily. It wasn’t solely the physical pain; that was the least of their worries.

“And I make it worse?” She lifted her head, her eyes watering. “I make it harder for you to…” _Let go_. The words caught in her throat, but she knew that this was what Alec really needed from her. He opened and closed his mouth, before giving her the smallest nod.

It was time.

“Fine,” Ellie reluctantly conceded, “I’ll stop calling you.”

“Don’t answer if I call you,” Alec said, making one final request. Ellie thought it was an odd one, but Alec was more worried about his ability to let go. If he was in pain and this was what he really wanted, then she’d do it.

“I hate you,” she told him, even though there was nothing further from the truth. “I really hate you right now.” Fresh tears coursed down her cheeks as she rested her head on his chest for what might be the last time. Alec closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her with a sigh. He pressed his lips to her forehead and held them there until he had to breathe.

“Thank you,” he whispered, kissing her brow again. “I want you and your boys to be _happy,_ and if you keep holding on-”

“Shut up, Alec,” she begged him. “Just shut up and hold me.”

So, he did.

Ellie cried herself to sleep.

*

The exhaustion threatened to drag him down into a dreamless sleep but Alec forced himself to stay awake. He memorized Ellie all over again, familiarizing himself with every part of her that he could see or touch. His hands were gentle and his fingers were light, so that he wouldn’t wake her from the slumber that she so desperately needed. Alec traced the sagging bruised skin beneath her eyes and cursed himself for getting so deep within her head that he haunted her dreams.

His mind still ticked and whirred in tandem with his wrist watch, but Ellie’s deep breathing and steady heartbeat calmed and distracted him. She mumbled and moved a few times, but always closer, stroking his chest and nuzzling his neck. Alec wouldn’t let go of her, but he didn’t wake her. A fierce protectiveness had washed over him the moment her eyelids had closed. She needed sleep, and for a few precious hours he’d been able to take care of her and cradle her in his arms. He’d held her before, but this brought him back to rocking his infant daughter to sleep and whispering to Fred in the nursery.

“Alec!” she gasped.

“’M right here, love,” he cooed. Ellie sighed and resettled into that space over his heart she’d claimed as her own. Her breathing evened out again, but Alec couldn’t keep her here forever. She had a life without him now, and her two boys were waiting for her at home.

“Ellie,” he murmured and kissed her hair. She stirred, moaning and scrunching up her nose, as he tickled her with little kisses.

“ _Alec_ ,” she whined, “’m tired.” But she flung her leg over his, splaying herself half on top of him. Alec caught his breath and growled her name. Ellie sleepily cracked open an eye and he kissed her wrinkled brow. She jerked awake.

“What time is it?”

His phone started buzzing on the bedside table. He slapped his palm down on it, before she could.

“I set an alarm,” Alec explained. Her eyes widened as everything came crashing down on her all over again.

“You should’ve woken me! We could’ve talked or something-”

“I didn’t want to talk,” he sighed.

“I can’t believe you let me sleep for three hours,” she lamented. “Why would you-”

Alec sat up, cringing as he was struck by the usual spike of pain. He sucked in a sharp breath and settled against the headboard beside her. Touching her face, he outlined the bags beneath her eyes.

“Do you feel better?” he asked, measuring the fading bruises. Ellie’s breath hitched, but Alec knew that physically she was less tired than she’d been earlier. “No nightmares?” he inquired. She shook her head.

“I don’t want you to lose anymore sleep over this,” he said, gently sweeping the pad of his thumb over one of them as if he could wipe it away like her tears. But they still left stains behind; blood shot eyes, pink puffy skin, and permanent scarring beneath.

Alec tapped his fingertip against her temple like he had done once on a cliff, when she’d told him how Broadchurch would follow her wherever she went, because it would always be home.

“I’m always going to be here,” he said softly. He had left a footprint there, just like Joe had trampled all over her memories, even the happiest one. Alec had been a part of her life and the lives of her sons for such a small amount of time, compared to the thirty-six years Ellie had lived without him. Only Fred could say that Alec had been there for half of his young life, but he’d grow up and forget him faster than Ellie or Tom. And yet because of the timing and his role in their tragedy, he had left a significant scar on her mind.

“I want you to remember _this_ ,” he insisted, curving his hand around the side of her face, and lining his fingers up with the contour of her profile. “Don’t think about anything else.”

He leaned in and kissed her slowly and deeply. Taking his time, he tried to make her forget that time was something that they’d run out of. Alec’s phone buzzed again. He almost missed it because he was buzzing too, getting high off of her like a drug that would end in a crash and another painful withdrawal.

“Ignore it,” Ellie whispered.

“Alright.” Alec parted her lips and lowered her to the bed. Ellie tugged him down on top of her and Alec forgot what he was supposed to be making her forget for a few more precious minutes. They waited until Alec’s phone went off for the third time before breaking apart.

“You have to go,” Alec panted as she rested her forehead against his. At some point, Ellie had rolled them over and had wound up on top with her legs tangled up in his and his fingers woven in her hair. He slid his hand down her neck, over her clavicle and down to her breast. Trembling, he found her heart and splayed his palm over it like the invisible tattoo she’d inked on his own. She’d left a permanent handprint on his heart and had kept it beating on borrowed time. 

“I’ll be here too,” he reminded her, pressing her heart and planting a kiss on her forehead. “And if you ever need anything-”

“I know, Alec. You don’t have to worry about us,” Ellie hushed him, brushing her lips over his again as Alec’s phone went off for the fourth and final time.

She untangled herself from him and they sat up, finding their shoes and her purse on the floor. Alec combed his fingers through her ringlets in a clumsy attempt to fix her hair. Ellie gave him the ghost of a smile and tousled his hair as if he were a boy. Alec scowled and she rewarded him with a watery laugh. The smile vanished when he cupped her elbow, and asked her again if he could walk her to her car.

Ellie nodded and they stood up together. His hand trailed down her arm until their palms were aligned. She threaded her fingers through his, and he opened the door for her.

The walk to her car was short, but they dragged out every last step. Her phone rang when they reached the car park. The sun was setting and Alec’s last day was fading away with the last rays of sunlight. He leaned in and gave her one last quick kiss. Ellie held him back before he could pull away.

“I-” she faltered, stumbling over three words that she wasn’t ready to say. Joe had nearly destroyed her, and Alec hadn’t been able to heal her.

But Ellie would heal herself, and one day, she’d say those words again.

“I’ll miss you,” she said instead, her eyes glistening. Alec tucked an errant curl behind her ear and clamped his lips together to keep them from quivering. “Take care of yourself in Glasgow,” she ordered him, smoothing the wrinkles from his Oxford. “I expect you to text me when you miss me and come to your bloody senses.”

“Ellie,” Alec sighed and tucked a finger beneath her chin. Ellie’s clumped eyelashes fluttered as he ghosted his lips over her crown. “I already miss you,” he murmured, catching a scalding droplet of water on her lashes before another tear could mar her pretty face.

Ellie hugged him. Alec held her tight, urging her to look after herself and her boys, and whispering that he loved her again. She shivered, and he knew that one of them would start crying if he didn’t let her go.

So, he did.

“Goodbye, Ellie,” he said.

Ellie broke down first. She got into her Toyota, shoving the key into the ignition to hide the sound of another strangled sob. Alec couldn’t watch her drive away. Scrubbing the moisture from his eyes, he went back to his empty hotel room and a bed that would smell like her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that was repetitive, but it was the original scene I wrote after Alec left Vicky at the café and first went home to Iris. I felt that Alec and Ellie got cheated out of time if I immediately jumped to here. A well plotted story would have, and a good author should have, but at this point I sat down and really thought about what someone would do with their “last” day. So I said fuck it, and I gave Alec and Ellie more than one day.


	45. When the Summer Ends and the Storm Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that time when I joked that I wouldn’t finish before 2017 or S3 aired? Whoops. I wrote this portion LAST YEAR, so I’ve been fussing over this shit for the last 12 months. It’s my whole heart, but it’s also something I should but I won’t change. I hate to let everyone down, but please know that I appreciate the time you took to read and review some of the earlier chapters, and I wish that I could’ve salvaged this story and finished it in a more timely manner. Thank you everyone, especially those of you that are sticking with me. You’re all AMAZING! 
> 
> Dear SEA, this is the letter that two years ago I couldn’t bring myself to write. This is the goodbye I never said. This is it: my apology, my regret, my anger, my grief and all my memories of you. 200k words of crap aren’t nearly enough to sum up the years, but right now it’s all I can do.

The days were longer now, but not long enough for Alec and Ellie. Their summer ended that evening with goodbye and broken hearts.

Ellie wanted to sleep until the days weren’t so warm and bright - tainted by an affair that ended before summer could officially begin - but her sister accosted her in the kitchen. Lucy took one look at her and shook her head.

“Seriously, El?” She was more disappointed than angry. “Alec’s _not_ your problem. I know that you love him, but you can’t take care of him.” Her troubled eyes settled on Ellie’s wan face. “In the past week, you’ve already called an ambulance for him, spent the night in the hospital, scrubbed his blood off your floor and waited DAYS for that insensitive prick to call you back.”

“Not now, Luce.” Ellie was too tired for a row or another bout of tears.

“I’m worried about you, El.” Lucy’s soft admission was worse than her fury. “I’d understand if you were alone or if the kids were older, but you have to think about _them_.” She stabbed a finger in the direction of the staircase. “Tom and Fred should be your only concern right now. If you’re too weak and stupid to end this affair before they get attached and _hurt,_ then I will call Alec bloody Hardy myself and tell him to-” Lucy broke off as Tom walked into the kitchen, but it was too late. She said goodnight, slamming the door and leaving Ellie to deal with her own son.

“You saw Alec again?” Tom’s changing voice cracked.

Forcing a smile, Ellie informed Tom that she’d brought him a gift from Alec. She retrieved the Liverpool tie pin from her purse and gave it to him. Tom stared at the present, but he didn’t thank her.

“Why doesn’t Alec want to see me and Fred anymore?” he asked.

“Sweetheart, you know that’s not true.” Ellie reached for him but Tom shied away from her. Lucy was right, Tom was already hurt. Ellie inwardly cursed Alec for abandoning her and her sons, even if it wasn’t entirely his fault.

“Alec’s very ill,” she reminded Tom, “and right now he needs to spend time with his _family_.” They both turned to the old kitchen table where they’d sat down to dinner together, like a _family_. She needed to respect Alec’s wishes, but they were more of a family to him than his own.

“ _You_ ’re still seeing him,” Tom argued, pouting. Ellie couldn’t deny that she had been seeing him, until today.

“He even came back to say goodbye to Fred,” he spat, “but all I get is a dumb tie pin to wear to his fucking funeral-”

“ _Language_!” Ellie smacked him upside the head. Tom’s eyes widened, but not because she’d hit him. For the first time he looked at her and noticed that she’d been crying.

“Mum, did he – did he die?” he stuttered. Ellie was tempted to rip the plaster off and tell him that he had. They’d said goodbye, and wherever Alec was going, he didn’t expect to come back. In a way, he was already dead to them, but Alec had begged her to lie to Tom.

“He didn’t die, sweetheart,” she said, and then took a deep breath. “Today, we broke up.”

Tom didn’t know how to react to that news. He was uncomfortably aware that dating _changed_ things, but Alec had always been there for them.

“Can I still talk to him?” he blurted. Ellie swallowed hard. He _missed_ Alec. She missed him too.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said gently, although it broke her heart. What if Tom called and Alec had already died? He would be devastated. “I’m sorry, Tom,” she apologized. “He’s going to Glasgow to visit some family and he’s so tired. I don’t think we should bother him.”

Tom’s shoulders slumped and Ellie hugged him. She had to be strong for her son, but as she felt Tom shudder and heard his sniffles, she had difficulty suppressing her tears. After a few minutes, Tom detached himself from her and determinedly mopped up any moisture with his sleeves. Ellie cupped his pink cheek and looked into his dry but red-rimmed eyes.  

“Alec loved you and Fred very much.” She kissed his forehead. “Please remember that, sweetheart. He wasn’t like your father. Alec was a _good_ man. And he wouldn’t want you to think that he abandoned you.”

“’s okay, Mum, I know.” Tom understood. He’d grown so much and she was so proud of him. Alec had been too. “I won’t forget him,” Tom vowed, cradling the tie pin in his hand. He studied her for a long moment, and then hesitantly made another promise, “I won’t ask you about him anymore.”

It was as if he already knew what Alec had begged of her. Or maybe Alec had asked something similar of Tom, to spare her the pain of having to relive his death every time he was mentioned. As her son went off to bed, Ellie wondered how she’d wound up with two wonderful kids. They deserved better, and Ellie vowed that no matter what happened, she’d do anything to make sure that they didn’t suffer anymore.

*

Alec repeatedly called and texted his daughter, but he got no reply. She’d be better off not knowing, but he still wished he could have told her the truth himself. He cursed himself for losing that bloody letter. He’d tried writing another one, but he couldn’t find the fucking pen and it was too painful to write out. Iris would tell her, when Keira forgave her for taking him in. Losing his daughter was his penance for failing Molly and Phoebe, but Ellie, Tom and Fred had opened their hearts to him, giving him false hopes that Keira might have been able to accept him too in the end. All he’d ever wanted was for her to be safe and happy, and he would die to ensure that happened. 

He shot off a quick text to Marty to confirm that he’d be there. At least Marty would take care of Iris. Alec had his word and had seen the proof. Marty had become a permanent fixture in Iris’ home; filling the empty space that Alec and Keira had left behind.

Sighing, he unbuttoned and peeled off his collared shirt. Weeks ago, Fred had stained the same Oxford with grape jam. Alec paused, pressing his palm against the fabric as if he could still see and feel the small handprint that wee Fred had tattooed on his heart. Ellie had curled her fingers into the starched material, wrinkling it and staking a permanent claim on him. Beneath the stench of his own fear and anxiety, he could smell traces of her on his Oxford. Bringing it to his nose, he breathed her in. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that she was in the room with him.

He finished undressing, swallowed his meds, and went to bed with the shirt clutched to his chest.

*

Ellie checked on her sons and placed the blue rock in the nursery where Fred would see it in the morning. Her baby would be delighted with Alec’s present. He was too young to understand what it meant to Alec. Stripping off her clothes, she stumbled to her closet and tripped over a black coat on the floor.

It was Alec’s.

Ellie picked up the coat and held it to her breast. The scent of salt, sand, jam, hotel soap and shampoo, and _him_ was overwhelming. Pressing the lapel against her cheek, she nuzzled the fabric and imagined that he was wearing it.

That coat contained so many pockets of memories. It was stained with her tears and torn from her need to have him closer; but the grains of sand and the sticky spot on his collar were tiny reminders of days and nights worth remembering. She remembered the bench where he’d held her; the sentencing when he tried to shield her; the first time she woke up in his coat and in his arms; the moment he kissed her beneath a lamp post; the night he snogged her on the beach; the day he took Tom to see his father; the morning after he slept with her and wrapped her up in his coat because he _loved_ her.

Tomorrow, she’d bury it in her closet, but tonight she put it on and climbed into bed with the memory of him curled around her.

Alec’s whole heart was in that coat, crumpled up in one of the pockets.

*

Alec woke, but without the usual pain or coughing fit. The hotel room was empty and the bed was cold; but in that moment between dreaming and consciousness, he thought that maybe he hadn’t been alone. The sense of someone being with him stayed, settling over him like a calm. He wasn’t numb or at peace, but he felt as if he’d stepped into the eye of the storm. Only a few hours remained before that storm arrived, but the tick of the clock was muffled. He put on his best suit, took all of his prescribed medications (although he didn’t see the point), packed up his carryall, and checked out of his room well before the sun came up.

His surgery was still hours away, so he walked down to the beach in the grey light that always preceded dawn. Once again, he hovered in that state between night and day, light and darkness, life and death.

A group of teenagers straggled past him; giggling and swinging an empty bottle of cheap vodka. One of the girls flicked her long hair over her shoulder like his daughter, and Alec saw Keira in that crowd, along with two girls smiling in a photograph capturing their last laugh. He shook himself, but Keira’s ghost lingered. In a moment he could envision all the things he’d never witness: a whole lifetime of smiles, laughter, accomplishments, milestones, tears and everything in between. The calm surrounding him dissolved as the sky lightened around him, for what could be the last time.

He took out his phone and called Keira three more times. It was four thirty in the morning, but he was desperate to hear the sound of her voice. She ignored his calls and he gave up. Sitting on the same rock where Ellie had offered him her hand, he watched the sun rise over the ocean. Shades of pink and purple brightened into hues of gold and orange. When that ball of light finally breached the blue horizon, Alec stood up.

He gazed out over the shimmering waves. Ellie’s laughter echoed in his head and he saw her out on the jetty. If he called her right now, he knew she’d pick up, even though he’d told her not to answer. He weighed his banged up mobile in his hands, running his fingers over all the cracks and scratches that were mostly Ellie’s fault. He’d called and texted Keira a hundred times, but he hadn’t received a single reply. She still hated him and he’d die without seeing her again or earning her forgiveness. He sent off a final text to her, telling her that he loved her, and then he threw his phone into the ocean.

Alec didn’t hear it hit the water; the splash was drowned out by the waves crashing on the shore at his feet. Turning his back on the sea, he slowly started walking toward hospital where he knew his heart would stop.

*

Ellie jerked awake at four thirty AM, but not because of a nightmare. Alec’s coat had been enough to trick her mind into temporarily keeping the night terrors at bay. Her eyes drifted shut as she burrowed into the familiar garment that smelled of him. Another jolt went through her, startling her into consciousness.

Sitting up, she noticed that her purse had tipped over, spilling off the edge of the wooden chest at the foot of her bed. Ellie climbed out of bed and swept everything into it except for the bundle of newspaper. She unwrapped Alec’s last gift to her. It must’ve cost him at least twenty quid; such thoughtfulness from a frustratingly stubborn man. She put the chocolate on the nightstand and was about to throw the newspaper away, when something caught her eye. There were some letters scrawled in the corner of yesterday’s front page. Her heart leapt into her throat, she would’ve recognized that handwriting anywhere.

Squinting at what Alec had written, she was disappointed to discover that it was only an address and a bunch of numbers. He’d obviously been in a hurry or on the phone, trying to take down some information quickly. Ellie felt a sharp pang in her chest, missing her grumpy boss and the way he would’ve thrust that memo at her on his way out the door, expecting her to interpret his messy scrawl. She smoothed the crinkles from the paper and refocused on the address. Fumbling for her phone, she plugged it into her GPS. An image of Wilson’s Memorial Hospital popped up.

It was the same hospital the ambulance had taken him to last week. Yesterday, they’d been right by there. Perhaps he’d gone to see one of those bloody doctors for more tests. Ellie hoped it wasn’t that abhorrent maggot who had wanted to get off with her, but beneath the address…

_Starzl_.

Alec had written _that_ doctor’s name below the string of numbers that materialized into a date, time and place. His appointment was _today_. It made sense that he’d go in before he traveled to Glasgow, they’d want to keep him comfortable, and Starzl was an arse but still a cardiologist. He’d bragged to her about being the best cardiac surgeon in the country, telling her of all the lives he’d saved and everything he’d done in the name of science. Ellie googled him and eventually found an article that explained exactly what Starzl did when he wasn’t leering at women. He hadn’t been lying; he was one of the top surgeons in his field. Ellie skimmed over his biography and the short abstract that included all of his accreditations, awards, grants, publications, books etc. In spite of the evidence of his brilliance, Ellie glared at his photograph and the smugness that was so obvious. She was about to exit the screen, when something in the list of his specialties made her pause.

She clicked on it and skimmed over what Alec had scribbled after the date and time of his appointment.

_Pre-op_.

The page concerning Starlz’ specialty had loaded. Ellie only needed to see the words “experimental”, “failure”, “fatalities” and “malpractice” to know that Alec was a bloody moron.

“ _Fuck_!”

His behavior yesterday made sense as everything fell into place. Ellie wanted to bang her head against the wall and throttle Alec fucking Hardy at the same time. She squinted again at the time he’d written down for the pre-op and glanced at the clock.

She called Lucy and offered her a hundred quid if she could get to Edgewood before Tom left for school and Fred would need a minder. Dressing and grabbing her purse, she woke Tom to tell him that she had to leave for work now, and kissed Fred goodbye. Then she got in her car and sped to Wilson Memorial Hospital to talk Alec out of committing suicide.

*

Wilson Memorial Hospital was forty-five minutes away, but Ellie made it in half an hour. It took her too long to find a parking spot, because some wanker wouldn’t move his car. And then she dropped her purse _again_ , somehow hitting her head on the fucking car door. Cursing, she dodged an ambulance and stormed into the hospital.

Wilson Memorial was a study in modern architecture; composed of an impressive number of windows flashing in the sunlight. Ellie took no heed of the millions of dollars that had been spent on that building as she fought through a group of residents to get to the front desk. She was almost there when she noticed the light pouring in through the skylight.

Ellie reread the time of the pre-op and walked out.

She spotted him on a sunny bench next to a smoking shelter, overlooking the car park. Alec didn’t see her because he was scowling at the poor schmuck that just wanted to have a cigarette. The bloke took one look at Ellie - stalking toward them with steam practically coming out of her ears - stamped out the fag and took off. Alec turned and didn’t seem surprised to find her glowering at him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the sun.

“Are you out of your god damn mind?” she yelled. A startled sparrow flew out of the hedge behind Alec, but he wasn’t alarmed or intimidated by the fact that she was furious and had spent the entire ride over working herself up into a rage. She even sent him a couple of nasty voicemails that he must have ignored.

“Did Iris tell you?”

“You bloody idiot! You wrote it down on the newspaper,” Ellie ground out from between clenched teeth. Alec lowered his hand from his forehead.

“Did I?” Unruffled, he stared out at the car park. His stoic demeanor made her angrier. Ellie wanted to scream at him, but Alec’s hands trembled slightly as he clasped them in his lap. He couldn’t hide his fear, not from her.

“You’re actually going through with this?” she asked him incredulously, sitting beside him.

“What do I have to lose?” he responded, gloomily.

“Alec, it’s _suicide_!”

“Wow, Millah, you really did do your research,” Alec sniped back at her, hiding behind his sarcasm. “You know, despite the four fatalities, and a success story that ended with a vegetable, I do have a one in five chance-”

“Twenty percent!” Ellie sputtered. “Are you serious?” Alec obviously didn’t know that arsehole that was about to operate on him was the same narcissistic prick who had hit on her, and clearly had very little regard for human life. But maybe he did know and he just didn’t care anymore.

“Alec, you’re _fine_ now.” She reasoned with him. “You could have spent the rest of the month, maybe two or three more months with Iris, or me and Fred and Tom, or your _daughter-_ ”

Alec whipped around and his gaze pierced right through her.

“Do you see my daughter here?” His voice was quiet, but Ellie could hear the emotion reverberating beneath those words. “My daughter _hates_ me. I called her twenty-five times yesterday and she didn’t pick up once.” Ellie felt his pain and her eyes prickled with unshed tears for him.

“I’ll take you there right now,” she offered frantically. “Come on. We’ll drive to your daughter’s house however many times it takes for you to see her-”

“It’s too late, Miller,” Alec brutally interrupted her, “I signed off on the surgery a week ago.” His mind was firmly made up or someone had made it up for him.

“Was it Iris that convinced you?” she queried. “Because you wouldn’t do it for me when your chances were a hell of a lot better-”

“Leave her out of this,” he snarled. “I’m ready to go, alright? Whether I die now or I die two months from now bedridden and unconscious, it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to _me_!” Ellie shot back, her voice quivering, “And it matters to Fred and to Tom. Do we really mean that little to you?”

“Don’t start, Millah,” Alec groaned and reached for her. Ellie scooted away from him, crossing her arms over her chest. “ _Ellie_.” He sighed behind her and rested his trembling hand on her shoulder. It was the tremor that compelled her to face him. “You know how I feel,” he whispered, but the tenderness in his gaze was tainted by sorrow and resignation.

“But that’s not enough,” Ellie realized, her eyes stinging. He loved her, but not enough to let her stop him or take care of him. There was only one person who might be able to change his mind.

“Oh, my God!” Ellie gasped. “You haven’t even told your daughter that you’re doing this or that you’re _dying_.”

“For fuck’s sake, Millah,” his Scottish burr bled through each shaky word. “Do you think I didnae try?” He sniffed and leant forward with his elbows on his knees. “‘s not something you can type out in a bloody text message. If it had been Tom…” He didn’t have to explain. If Ellie had been in his shoes, she would’ve wanted to be face to face with her son when she told him.

“I lost her years ago,” Alec lamented, rubbing at his eyes. “That beautiful woman she’s become, I don’t know her. Keira needs Iris and Iris needs her. They won’t forgive each other or me until I’m gone.”

“That’s not true,” Ellie argued. 

“You don’t know them,” Alec said harshly. She was reminded again that he did have a family; a family that he desperately longed for and needed to care for and protect. It didn’t matter how much Ellie, Tom and Fred loved Alec, they could never substitute his real family. “It’s… complicated,” he struggled to explain, “But I need to do this. It’s the only thing I can do for her, for both of them.” He trailed off, his eyes far away. “I owe it to Iris, and as long as my daughter’s happy nothing else matters. I love Keira and that’s all I want for her.”

Ellie was finding it hard to breathe. He’d said almost the exact same thing to her. This stupid man had a heart as big and full as the ocean, and he was willing to give up anything and to do everything for someone he loved. She sniffled and took his hand. Alec lifted her hand to his lips and brushed a kiss over her knuckles.

“You shouldnae be here,” he breathed over her skin. Ellie shuddered at the thought of him entering that cold theater.

“Someone has to be.” She leaned into his side and squeezed his thigh. “You won’t go into this alone,” she promised.

“Iris and Marty will be here by now. I’m surprised they haven’t found me yet, and dragged me into the hospital,” he said hollowly. He kissed her palm, and then her wrist, where he’d once left his fingerprints and a bracelet of bruises. He’d been in so much pain. His thumb stroked over the invisible scar and their eyes met. Suddenly, he frowned and let go of her wrist.

“Miller, you’ve got jam in your hair.” She flinched when he touched her hairline. “It’s not jam,” Alec realized, holding her head in place. “Ellie,” he said sharply, “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m not bleeding,” she insisted, but when she touched the spot, her finger tips came away red.

“What happened?” He dabbed at it with his sleeve and then applied more pressure.

“I must’ve hit my head on the car door,” Ellie recollected. Alec muttered something under his breath. A wave of lightheadedness passed over her as he abruptly pulled her to her feet, but it had very little to do with the wound.

“Alec, it’s only a scratch. _Alec_!” But he was already towing her in the direction of the hospital. Ellie dug her heels in, forcing him to slow his relentless pace. She didn’t know where this sudden burst of strength was coming from, but it was scaring her.

“Look.” She pointed ahead of them. “There’s a restroom right down that hall. I can go – what are you doing?” she asked shrilly. He nearly knocked over a big yellow “Wet Floor” placard on his way into the handicapped restroom that had an “Out of order” sign taped to the door. He guided her toward the sink and locked the door behind them.

“I’m fine. You’re the one who should be in pre-op right now,” she prodded him.

“At half past nine,” he corrected her, switching on the tap and wetting a paper towel.

“It was definitely a seven,” she argued.

“It was not.” He turned off the water and cupped her cheek. “I wrote it down myself.”

“Well, it looked like a seven.”

“Hold still,” Alec ordered her and pressed the paper towel to her head.

The water from the soaked paper towel dripped down the side of her face. She shivered as a droplet went down the back of her neck and underneath her collar. For a split second, she flashed back to a shelter in the middle of a rainstorm and the way he’d held her then. Alec wrung the paper towel out in his fist, and resumed cleaning the cut. It wasn’t big, but even the smallest head wounds bled as if they were. Ellie would know; last week she had sat on her floor with a tea towel, cradling Alec’s head in her lap when the blood wouldn’t stop. Ellie shuddered again at the horrifying memory and struggled to block out what would likely happen when they cut him open today. Alec whispered an apology as he tilted her head toward the mirror and their reflections.

The glass did him no favors; beneath that light he was a washed out skeleton of the man she’d met. Alec could barely stand upright, but he was still trying to take care of her. The moron was about to _die_ and he was fussing over a fucking scratch.

And as his eyes and fingers lightly ghosted over the graze, it finally hit her. She was in _love_ with Alec bloody Hardy. She _loved_ him, like she had _loved_ Joe, with her whole bleeding heart. He had given her everything and she wanted to give him everything too, but she couldn’t do anything to prevent him from dying today.  

“Alec, _stop_.” Ripping the soaked paper towel from him, she threw it aside.

“Did I hurt you?” His eyes went wide.

“No,” she moaned, “God, no.” Ellie burst into tears and fell into her lover’s arms. Wrapping herself around him, she clung to him and buried her face in the front of his ironed shirt.

“Ellie, don’t cry. Please, don’t cry,” Alec begged her. He shushed her and kissed her crown over and over again. Ellie tried to stop crying but she couldn’t. Alec’s breathing grew more ragged and his fingers twisted painfully in her curls. His body trembled beneath her. She had to pull herself together before he started crying too.

“Look at me, Alec,” she demanded, framing his face between her hands. “You can’t die.”

Alec laughed at her, he actually _laughed_ at her. His hysterical laughter switched to that hacking cough that frightened her. Ellie smoothed his hair from his forehead and waited until he had finished.

“You have to wake up, you hear me?” she said as her eyes locked with his. “You said one in five-”

“More like ten percent actually,” he informed her with another gasping bark. Ellie’s heart sank so fast that she almost fell to her knees. Alec somehow caught her again, supporting them both against the counter. The room was spinning.

“I think you have a concussion.” He worried, inspecting the injury with nimble fingers. “It stopped bleeding, but I’d feel better if someone took a look at it.”

“No,” Ellie said. The world had come back into focus with a shocking clarity. “No, you sit down and listen to me.” She shoved him onto the edge of the sink. Alec gaped at her as she grasped at his shoulders and an insane plan.

“You could survive this,” she told him, but he knew that she didn’t believe her own words. “Think of your daughter,” she pleaded with him. Alec expelled a breath.

“She despises me,” he reminded her and hung his head.

“What if she didn’t?” Ellie wondered. Alec stilled. She ran her fingers through his fringe, tipping his head back. His eyes were brighter and Ellie’s heart skipped a beat. “Alec, what if she didn’t?” she repeated and he bit his lip. “What if she didn’t want you to die yet? What if she wanted some more time with you?” She held her breath as Alec silently searched her face.  For a fleeting moment, she thought she’d seen it; a spark of hope that he might’ve been hiding and stoking deep within himself. But when he slid his arms beneath hers and pulled her close, it was gone.

“Please, Alec.” She latched onto him and the dying embers of heartbreakingly false hopes. “Come back for _her_.”

He made a strangled sound in his throat and tucked his face into the crook of her neck.

“ _Please_ ,” Ellie whispered and fisted her hands in his hair and his suit jacket. “Please, you stupid, bloody idiot, don’t you dare fucking die on _her_ or me or Iris or Fred or Tom.”

Someone banged on the door behind them. Alec startled. Ellie soothed him, stroking his hair and his back as another cough racked through him.

“It’s occupied!” she hollered at the closed door. Someone rattled the doorknob. She’d probably bought them a couple of minutes, but not much longer. Ellie had to leave him now.

“Can you stay?” he asked her. His nails dug into her hips as the fear surfaced in his eyes. He cleared his throat and blurted, “Will you spend the rest of my life with me?”

Ellie paled and her knees threatened to give out on her again. The wanker had been trying to tell her all day yesterday. She would’ve spent the night with him. She would’ve spent the whole bleeding week with him if he’d told her the bloody truth. It was too late now. 

Ellie shook her head.

“Ask me again tomorrow when you wake up,” she urged him, and a tear leaked from Alec’s right eye. Ellie wiped it away. “Ask me tomorrow,” she repeated, but he wouldn’t. They both knew that he wouldn’t. “I’m not agreeing to anything in this filthy loo.” Alec made a breathy noise that could’ve been a laugh.

“Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee,” he proposed.

“Alec, I can’t.” Her voice wavered and another tear trekked down Alec’s cheek. “Later,” she promised. “I’ll try to be back, I just have to-”

“’s alright, Ellie,” Alec said, crestfallen.

“I have to go, but I’ll come back, I promise. I’ll be there when you wake up,” she assured him, carding her fingers through his hair.

He was so vulnerable, and Ellie loathed herself for leaving him now when he needed her to stay.

“When you wake up, we’re going to Broadchurch,” she told him, and a future they’d never have stretched out before her. “We’ll take the boys and Keira too.” She wanted that day so badly that she could almost see it, because she knew that Alec was imagining it too. “We’ll all go to the beach and then we’ll walk along those cliffs you love so much.” Alec snorted and Ellie swept her thumb over the curve of his mouth. “And then – then you can ask me again…” She stopped because the vision was too much. They bowed and broke beneath the weight of that illusion.

“I’m so sorry, Ellie,” he rasped, his eyes shining. “You’ll move on and you’ll find someone else who can give you and the boys everything that I couldn’t.”

“No, you have to come back,” she demanded.

“I will, when you need me,” he vowed, “You’ve got that number, and I’ll…” His voice died.

“You’ll wake up,” she argued, even though they knew it wouldn’t happen. “You’re going to wake up.” Alec stared at her for a long moment.

“You’ll be there?”

“I promise,” Ellie lied and slowly let go of him. “Don’t be scared,” she told him with a confidence she didn’t feel. “You’re going to get through this.” Alec nodded and pretended that he believed her. Their fingers found each other and intertwined for the last time.

“I love you,” he told her again. He waited for her to say it but all she could do was squeeze his hand. The silence stretched between them in that damn restroom that he’d dragged her into, because he wanted to fuss over a stupid scratch. He was about to go under a knife, and he was still making sure that she was alright.

“You should put something on it, so it doesn’t get infected,” he murmured, leaning into her. Ellie stepped back. She couldn’t handle his heart-wrenching attention and care. She knew that if he kissed her now, she’d stay with him, and she couldn’t afford to lose any more time. He crossed his arms over his chest, and his eyes raked over her with that soft tangible caress.

“You’re not going to kiss me goodbye?” he teased her, although the disappointment was evident in his voice.

“No,” Ellie refused, her voice cracking. She blinked back tears.

“Why not?” Alec asked, wounded.

“I’m not kissing you until you wake up,” she bargained with him. Alec lightly touched the scab on her head in lieu of a kiss. With a brush of his hand, he expressed an intimacy and tenderness that would linger long after he was gone. 

“Look after yourself, Ellie,” he whispered, dropping his hand.

He turned his back on her and opened the door.

They didn’t say goodbye. They stepped out into an angry, scowling audience and a cold hospital. A custodian, Iris, and the Scottish doctor she’d met before, were all glaring at them. Ellie wanted to run and Alec sensed it. His hand crept up her spine, flattening between her shoulder blades. And then he gently pushed her away from him, protecting her from the barrage of questions that immediately followed.

Ellie didn’t realize that Iris had followed her, until she reached the door and tried to catch one final glimpse of Alec. Her eyes widened as Iris stopped her with a look that could’ve frozen hell over.

“Do you know how many favors I had to call in, and how much time I spent researching, and working with my nephew to try to find _one_ surgeon that could perform that surgery?” Iris asked her with an icy rage. “I barely know you but I’ve seen the effect that you have on him. If you set him off and he isn’t able to get onto the operating table-” Ellie had had enough.

“You may have done what I couldn’t and gotten him _onto_ that table,” she growled, “But I’m going to give him a _reason_ to get _off_ the table.”

Ellie went to walk by her, but Iris nailed her with another glare. The other woman knew exactly what Ellie was thinking.

“I’ve already tried it. We all have,” Iris told her. “You would have to be very stupid to attempt it right now in the middle of all this, when he needs to be _stable._ ”

Ellie exploded.

“That “stability” is what’s _killing_ him inside! How can you not see it? That man is _dying_ , but not because of his fucking heart condition. He needs-”

“Iris!” Alec called from across the room.

There was a lot more that could have been said, but the other woman conveyed everything in one contemptuous flick of her eyes and a shake of her head. There was no point in arguing, that woman was as stubborn as Alec and in denial. Ellie couldn’t blame her; she loved Alec too.

“You broke his heart, didn’t you?” Iris accused her.

Ellie’s eyes flitted to Alec striding toward them.

“Yeah,” Ellie admitted and backed into the door before Alec could reach her.

“Ellie,” he said. “Wait.”

Ellie didn’t wait for him. Iris led Alec away, but Ellie felt his gaze upon her as she rushed outside and into the car park. She pulled out of the hospital and onto the main road. Checking the time on the dashboard, she hit the gas and floored it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Alec’s Mobile Phone. Sorry, I just had to say it. I debated whether a trigger warning might be necessary for the cellphone’s sudden and depressing demise, but after some careful consideration I don’t think anyone will flame me for that one. Well… not yet anyway. Sorry it was so clunky and repetitive, I could use a beta and some more coffee. Feel free to point out mistakes and rage at me.


	46. An Hourglass and a Force of Nature

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG I might actually finish this before 2018, lol. (I hope I didn’t just jinx myself again)Thank you again to everyone who has suffered through my miserable and heartbreakingly depressing writing. You all deserve a medal! I just broke 250k and 45 chapters, holy guacamole! Remember this is AU and I have OCs in place of Tess, Daisy and Dave etc. 
> 
> Dear SEA, sorry I didn’t visit, sorry I didn’t make it in time. I was too late and I’ll never forgive myself. I was there in that room, but you were already gone.

It was incredibly easy to find out where DS Victoria Williams had been transferred three years ago. After starting her new job, Ellie had looked her up out of sheer curiosity. She was grateful that the Ridgeriver Police Department was so close to Wilson Memorial.

Twenty minutes later, her car barreled into the parking lot of the stationhouse. She ran inside and was panting by the time she reached the desk sergeant.

“I’m here to see DS Williams.” Ellie flashed her badge. “I need to talk to her immediately,” she demanded. The woman scowled at her over the rims of her spectacles and Ellie leaned across the desk. “Please, it’s about her daughter and it’s important.”

“ _Again_?” The desk sergeant’s eyes widened. “Vicky’s not going to be happy, this is the second time this week,” she muttered and picked up the phone to page Alec’s ex-wife.

Ellie didn’t like the desk sergeant’s reaction, but at least she had her attention and had escaped any further questioning. She wrung her hands as she impatiently waited for the woman that broke Alec’s heart and ruined his life.

Vicky didn’t make her wait long. She came out of the CID, shrugging her fashionable coat on and slinging her fancy hand bag over her shoulder. Ellie had seen pictures but they didn’t do this woman justice. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but it hadn’t been this classy and pretty tall blonde. Victoria Williams was nothing like Ellie, and yet this was the woman who Alec had loved, and who at one point had loved Alec enough to marry him. The woman narrowed her blue eyes, scrutinizing Ellie.

“You’re not Cynthia,” she observed, frowning.

“No, I’m not,” Ellie conceded, “But you need to get your daughter and you need to get her _now_.”

“Who are you?” Vicky asked, looking down on her. It was a fair question, but Ellie didn’t have time to explain the complex relationship she had with Alec Hardy.

“Your husband’s dying,” she blurted out.

“We’re not married yet,” Vicky said, flipping her hair back and flashing the engagement ring Cooper had given her. “I just saw him and he’s fine, so whatever horseshit-”

“Your _ex_ -husbands dying,” Ellie clarified, crossing her arms over her chest, so that she didn’t punch the woman in the face for forgetting Alec so easily.

Vicky froze and cupped a hand over her mouth. She glanced over her shoulder at the desk sergeant eagerly listening behind them, and ushered Ellie outside. Vicky had longer legs, and Ellie had to struggle to keep up with her. They didn’t speak until they were in the car park behind the building.

“My fiancé told me that he had a heart condition, but apparently he’s had it for years.” Vicky’s eyes flitted around the empty lot and went on in a low voice, “I _know_ him. He’s the most obstinate man I’ve ever met. He’ll defy those doctors and hang on just to spite them and me-”

“He’ll be dead by tonight,” Ellie cut her off, her voice trembling. Shell-shocked, Vicky stilled beside the shiny newer model of Alec’s old car. Ellie had seen them both in the driveway the one time she’d taken him _home_.

“You don’t know that for sure,” Vicky hedged, “And I don’t even know you.”

“In another two hours he’ll go in for a surgery that he won’t survive,” Ellie informed her, swallowing the lump in her throat along with the painful reality that she was now facing. She’d planned on playing it up a bit to get Vicky’s attention and to get her to do what she wanted as quickly as possible, but Ellie didn’t have to fake anything. Everything that was coming out of her mouth was _true_.

“He hasn’t seen or spoken to his daughter in over a year,” she reminded Vicky, “The only thing that he wants is to see her and to talk to her before they put him under.” She held her breath and waited again on the woman that had destroyed everything and could destroy this too for Alec.

“What time is he going in?” Vicky asked, glancing at her wrist watch.

“Half past nine,” Ellie told her. “He’s at Wilson Memorial.”

“That’s less than two hours and it’s at least a half an hour drive away!” Vicky sputtered. “There’s no bloody way we’ll get there in time, even if I could drag Keira-”

Ellie stepped into her space and grabbed the woman’s arm before she could walk away from her.

“I know who you are, and I know exactly what you did and what really happened in Sandbrook,” Ellie revealed with an underlying threat. Vicky blanched but Ellie wasn’t finished. “You’ve got two hours to get Keira to Alec before he goes in. If you’re not there with Keira by then…” Ellie didn’t need to finish, Vicky was as white as a sheet.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, but her pale face spoke for itself.

“Go ahead, call Iris. She’s with Alec at Wilson Memorial right now,” Ellie dared her. She wasn’t sure if Iris would back her up on this particular threat or let Vicky talk to Alec, but Vicky bought it. Or at least Ellie thought she did. But there was something else that had shaken up the other woman. All of Vicky’s confidence and contempt was gone, and she had a white knuckle grip on her handbag.

“Don’t just stand there!” Ellie barked. “Go get her and bring her to the hospital. Iris can tell you where he is.”

“It’s not that,” Vicky sighed and fiddled with the leather strap of her bag. “I _do_ want Alec to see Keira. I’m not a complete heartless bitch,” she began hesitantly, “But Keira _hates_ Alec and she-”

“And whose fault is that?” Ellie shot back. Vicky flinched. “Go get her or I will find the school and get her myself,” she warned the other woman.

“I don’t even know if she’s at school!” Vicky exclaimed and threw up her hands. “She’s been skiving off school all the time. I never know where she is anymore or what she’s doing. I can’t control her.” Her voice shifted in pitch as she ran her fingers through her perfectly coiffed hair. “Keira’s gotten into everything from underage sex to prescription drugs. She’s been rebelling since the day her father left, because Alec didn’t want to tell her _why_ he left,” Vicky poured out in a rush.

She blinked at Ellie when she was finished. They were both shocked that she’d opened up to a complete stranger. Ellie didn’t know what to do with that information. All this time, Alec had been trying to get ahold of Keira and had been upset with Vicky for making up excuses. Now it turned out that Keira was from what it sounded like, unreachable and uncontrollable, and lashing out at _everyone_ , not just her father.

“You never told him _any_ of this?” Ellie asked the anxious woman in front of her that had shrunk while they were talking.

“First we were worried that Alec might try to get custody of Keira,” Vicky confessed. “I knew he wouldn’t, but our solicitor-” She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder. “The details aren’t important, but when the two years expired, and Alec didn’t do anything, Cooper found out that Alec was ill…” Vicky nervously patted down her hair.

“Did Iris know?” Ellie wondered.

“No, we didn’t tell her or Keira,” Vicky admitted guiltily, “And I didn’t tell Alec that I knew either. I only found out a few weeks ago after I saw him and spoke to Cooper how bad off he was, but we had no idea that he was actively _dying_.” Vicky’s remorseful gaze held a long overdue apology to a man she must’ve still cared about in some form. “If I’d known, I would’ve tried-”

“You have to get Keira _now_ ,” Ellie interrupted her, because as eye-opening as this was, they were running out of time.

“What if she’s not at school?” Vicky worried. Ellie couldn’t believe that this was the woman who Alec had married and loved for over fourteen years.  

“If she’s not at school, then go find her!”

“She could be anywhere!” Vicky argued.

“You are her MOTHER!” Ellie yelled at the cowardly woman who _broke_ the man she loved and had the power to _kill_ him too. “If anyone knows her at all, it’s you. And you _will_ find her and you _will_ bring her to the hospital before half past nine, so that Alec can have the _only_ thing he ever asked of you.”

Vicky bit her lip and fumbled the buckle on her purse.

“And you won’t tell anyone about Sandbrook?” she asked, timidly. Ellie gave her a glare that sent the other woman stumbling backwards. “That’s not why-” Vicky stammered, hurriedly searching for her keys. “I do love Alec because he was a good father and a good man-”

“Then fucking prove it to him before he dies without seeing his own daughter!” Ellie lashed out at her. Vicky stood there, stunned, with the keys in her hand.

“Who are you?” Alec’s ex sized Ellie up again, raking her eyes over her. Ellie didn’t have time to deal with any of this.

“You better be there with Keira by half past nine,” Ellie threatened her.  “I’ll be waiting to see if you show up and if you don’t…” She trailed off ominously. Vicky quickly got into her car. Ellie waited until she heard the engine, before returning to her Toyota.

As soon as she shut the door, all of the strength, the anger, and the feral need to get Alec what he wanted at any cost, left her. She hugged the steering wheel and tried so hard not to cry again. But it was out of her hands now and there was _nothing_ she could do about it.

She sent up a silent prayer to whoever was listening that Keira was at school and that Vicky could get her to the hospital before Alec died.

*

It was a nine, not a seven as Miller had insisted, but they’d both been wrong. Alec was supposed to show up at half past nine to fill out paperwork, but he didn’t have to actually be there until ten. It was almost nine, and Alec still had over an hour to kill. After looking at the time for the nth time, Alec removed the watch that Vicky and Keira had gotten him for his thirty-third birthday.

“Here.” Alec handed it to Marty who was seated on his right.

“A watch?” Marty raised his eyebrows. “I’ve put up with your skinny arse for over thirty years and you give me a bloody watch that won’t even fit around my wrist? And you won’t even let me _look_ at your mysterious bonny lass-”

“I could give you another black eye instead, so you can always remember me,” Alec growled.

“ _Boys_!” Iris scolded them with a glare that Alec could feel burning through his shoulder blades, even though his back was to her. Marty told them he was going for a walk. Alec settled down beside Iris, but he glowered at Marty until he left the waiting room.

"You could've at least introduced her," Iris said. "It wasn't necessary you went over there and did the introductions yourself," Alec grumbled, because although Iris had been blocking Ellie from his view, Alec suspected that it hadn't been a friendly conversation. "What'd you say to her?" he asked.

"I introduced myself because you were too rude to do it yourself," Iris replied. Alec thought she was lying, but there was no point in prying now. "What were the two of you doing in an out of order restroom for almost a half an hour?" Iris inquired, and Alec's face flushed.

"It's not what you think," he stammered, scratching at his neck. “We were just saying goodbye."

Iris' face softened. Alec slouched in his chair and gloomily eyed the tiled floor that led to the double doors that would take him to the pre-op, and then the table where he was certain he'd die. Iris reached for his hand, curling her bony fingers around his longer ones. Alec looked up at her.

"You're not going to die today," she told him with a steady stoic calm that sometimes Alec hated. He was a Scot with a temper, and although he could be cool headed when it was necessary, he could never learn how Iris did it all the time.

"You're not having second thoughts are you?" she asked him, worriedly. "Because if this isn't what you want darling or if you're not comfortable, we can walk out of here right now," she offered. Alec knew that despite all the trouble her and Marty had gone through to find that one surgeon that would chance his surgery, she would take him out of there in a heartbeat. He covered her hand with his other one, holding onto her wrinkled hand that had raised him to be the good man that he once was before he'd made a mess with Sandbrook, and left his daughter without an explanation or a goodbye.

"I wouldn't have signed off on this, if I didn't want to go through with it," he lied to her, because he honestly wasn't sure anymore.

Iris would take care of him and Ellie had offered him a home. But Ellie was right about him needing to see Keira, even though he tried to content himself with the fact that she was happier without him. Both Marty and Iris had assured him that Keira's happiness was their top priority, and he knew that Vicky and Cooper would take care of his daughter as well. He'd gone to the solicitor, and everything had been taken care of, including Iris who he owed so much. There was only one more thing he had to do - and judging from what he witnessed earlier - Iris wasn't going to like it. But he knew she'd do it for him anyway. He rubbed his thumb over her varicose veined hands.

"Iris, I gave Ellie your number," he said quietly. "And I gave her son, Tom, your number too." Iris was clearly surprised, especially since Alec had only vaguely referred to the fact that Ellie was a mother that had at least one child.

"I told them that if they ever needed anything that they could call you, and that you'd try to help them," he went on softly. "I know it's the last thing you want to hear, but I-” He cleared his throat. “I _care_ about them, and if I don't make it..." He swallowed hard and Iris squeezed his hand.

"You don't have to worry about them," she assured him, "You're going to make it," she said confidently. Alec didn't know where she got that confidence from. His eyes burned. His time was running out and he was tired and ready, but he was still scared. He glanced at the door for the nth time.

“Are you waiting for someone?”

“No,” Alec lied.

“Are you going to make a run for it?”

“No.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles again before letting go. They lapsed into silence until Alec’s gaze drifted back to the door.

"How long were you two together?" Iris wondered, trying to distract him. Alec took a moment to consider it. He’d told Ellie to move on weeks ago, but they'd never figured out what they were to begin with.

"Honestly?" Alec barked a laugh, "About a month." Iris stared at him, stunned. Alec wasn’t a “love at first sight” type of man, but he’d already made it perfectly clear that he _loved_ Ellie in a few short words without actually coming out and saying it.

“We've known each other for a year," Alec explained, sighing as he recalled how they'd met over a child’s dead body. "We worked together until I-" He folded his arms over his chest, already knowing that Iris had heard a little about Broadchurch, the Latimer case, and his heart attack, because Marty couldn't keep his gob shut. "I had a heart attack and Ellie had a - a tragedy in her family and she had to stop working too," Alec went on hesitantly, not wanting to tell Iris about those secrets that he'd fought so hard to keep out of the press. "I - um -" He tugged at his ear and coughed. "I tried to help her get back on her feet because I was there when it happened." His mind traveled down that long and winding road that had begun with three devastating words and had ended at a hospital in an out of order restroom. “I’m not sure if it helped but I kept coming around. She sort of grew on me, and I guess I must’ve grown on her too.”

Alec didn’t know at what point it had happened or at what point the switch had been flicked, because when he’d climbed into bed with her that first night, neither of them had wanted or had ever expected that it would end like _this_.

“I found out I was dying right after we – um - got together,” he confessed and dragged a hand down his face. “So, I left her and came home.” It sounded terrible when he put it that way. But he couldn’t tell her everything that they’d gone through or how important it was that Ellie moved on from him and her past. All he wanted, all he’d ever wanted, was for her and her boys to start a new happier life.  

“Just promise me that you’ll try to help them if they call,” Alec begged her, but he knew that Iris would be there for him if they needed her to be.

“I promise,” Iris vowed, resting her hand on his arm.

“Thank you.” He breathed a small sigh of relief as she lifted a wee bit of the weight from his shoulders.

“Are you really that scared?” Iris asked him softly. Alec didn’t answer. She reached out and cupped his cheek, turning his face toward hers.

“Oh, _darling_ ,” Iris whispered. “There’s still time…”

“I’m not running,” Alec stated stubbornly. “I’m ready.” Or at least he tried to persuade himself that he was ready to go under that knife and that he was ready to die.

He’d had forty-two years. Most of them had been happy and he’d done a lot. But over the last three years he’d screwed up a lot too. He’d accepted the fact that he was dying, long before he actually heard the words. He’d been sick, he’d been tired, he’d been lonely and he’d been ready; and then right in the middle of all that Ellie Miller had marched into his life with her two boys in tow. But when it caught up with him and the time came, Ellie had cared so much about him that she’d managed to forgive him and let him go. The only person he loved that he hadn’t been able to say goodbye to was Keira. Alec wasn’t sure if he wanted that goodbye or if he wanted to die knowing that she would be happier without him.

Iris ran her fingers through his hair. Alec closed his eyes, leaning into her touch for what could be the last time. Cradling his face between her trembling hands, she pressed a lingering kiss to the exact center of his forehead. She’d done it a million times when she thought he was sleeping, but Alec always knew. He’d inherited that instinct to kiss the people he loved in that exact same spot from her. Everything that mattered, he’d learned from her.

“I love you,” Iris told him.

“I love you too.” Alec could only remember a handful of times when the words had actually been exchanged out loud, but he always knew by the way she looked at him and cared for him that she loved him. After her husband had died Alec had vowed to take care of Iris like she’d taken care of him, but he’d failed her and Frank. He wished he knew how to tell her that he was sorry.

Alec’s phone went off, destroying the fragility of that moment between them. He reached into his suit jacket and came up empty-handed.

“It’s yours.” He pointed to her purse.

“What happened to yours?” She squinted at him suspiciously.

“I chucked it into the ocean,” Alec admitted. Iris shook her head at him as she dug her ancient mobile out of her purse. “It was broken,” he whined.

Iris looked as if she wanted to say something else to him, but she froze when she saw the caller ID.

“Who is it?” Alec tried to steal a peek, but Iris was already on her feet and leaving the waiting room.

“I’ll be right back, darling,” she promised and then the door shut behind her.

And Alec was alone.  

*

Ellie was back at Wilson Memorial Hospital by half past eight. Lucy called to tell her that Tom was at school and that she had Fred. Ellie half-heartedly fed Lucy some bullshit about a crisis at work, but Lucy was her sister and she wasn’t stupid.

“You’re with _him_ again,” she accused Ellie. “For God’s sake, El. You should be at work right now, and you _left_ your children for this man who’s already a lost cause. Let me talk to the prick! I’ve got a lot I want to say to him-” Ellie hung up on Lucy. At least Alec would be happy he’d escaped Lucy’s wrath. The thought almost made her laugh.

Ellie didn’t know that Lucy was already leaving Alec a scathing voicemail, in the same queue as her own. 

It was almost nine by that point, and Ellie had been pacing the lobby and watching the front entrance like a hawk. She wanted to track down Alec and spend the rest of his life with him, but Vicky still hadn’t surfaced with Keira and Ellie was panicking.

She didn’t have any way to contact Vicky or Keira, but Alec had given her Iris’ number for when she needed help. Right now, she could use all the help she could get, but Iris’ idea of what Alec needed now was very different from what Ellie thought he needed now. Thanks to Vicky, Ellie finally understood why Alec hadn’t seen his daughter, and why Iris had made no effort to get her here today. But Ellie knew in spite of his fears and what he told her, that this was what Alec _wanted,_ and after everything he’d done and sacrificed for _her_ and everyone else he loved, Ellie would make damn sure that he got it.

Ellie called Iris. She didn’t pick up the first time, but Ellie got her on the second try.

“Iris?”

“ _Is this Ellie_?” Iris asked warily. Ellie didn’t know how much Alec had told Iris, but he must’ve told her _something_.

“Yeah, this is Ellie,” she answered and wondered where to begin. “I talked to Vicky.”

“ _And you told her about Alec_?”

“Someone had to!” Ellie ground out between clenched teeth. “For god’s sake, all he wants is to see his bloody daughter and _you_ – all of you – have been keeping her from him-”

“For good reason!” Iris snapped, and then that woman that was so eerily calm, _exploded_. “ _You_ don’t know _anything_ about Keira, and clearly you don’t _know_ Alec, because you would’ve understood by now that it would’ve hurt him. It would’ve _killed_ him if he knew what his daughter has become, all because he insisted on lying to her and leaving, because that’s what he foolishly thought was best for her. He didn’t even give her a bloody choice, and he never told me-”

Ellie stopped listening. Obviously, Keira wasn’t the only one that was upset that Alec had taken off due to his stupid big broken heart that he didn’t know what to do with. He tried so hard to do what he thought would make the people he loved happiest, but he wound up breaking this woman’s heart, killing himself and losing the one person that he loved most.

“Vicky’s bringing Keira here, right now,” Ellie announced, when Iris paused to take a ragged breath.

“ _What_?” Iris gasped.

“She’ll have Keira here by half past nine, or I’ll tell everyone that it was Vicky - not Alec - that had the affair and lost the evidence in the Sandbrook case and failed those families.”

Iris was breathing heavily on the other end of the line.

“ _Have you even met Keira_?” she finally spoke.

“No,” Ellie admitted. For the first time she wondered if Iris was right, and that maybe she’d made a mistake; because Vicky had just walked into the building, as promised, and she had a very angry, scowling teenager in tow. “I take that back,” Ellie said, her eyes widening. “They just walked in.” She hung up before Iris could say anything else.

Keira screamed rebellion from her bright pink hair to her black combat boots. If it wasn’t for the scowl, Ellie would’ve never believed that that teenager could in any way or form be related to the man upstairs that had worn his best suit to a surgery that would strip him of everything. Ellie had never met Keira before, but she’d seen the old family pictures Alec had on his phone, and this teenager was _nothing_ like that little girl that Alec had loved. She hadn’t even talked to Keira, and yet Keira somehow carried herself in such a way and gave off an aura of abrasive negativity that made Ellie wonder if there was anything left of the daughter Alec had loved. She tried to remember if Alec had told her when he’d last seen Keira, but she knew it had to have been at least a year, possibly longer.

“ _Shit_ ,” Ellie swore as Vicky spotted her, and Keira wrenched her arm free from her mother.

“You better not be lying to me,” Vicky spat. Gone was the perfectly made up woman that had met her at the station; Vicky’s makeup was smudged, her mascara was running, and her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Keira wasn’t crying but her eyes were blazing. Suddenly, Ellie was afraid of what would happen when that teenager walked into that room and threw all of that hatred and anger at a man that had a heart so fragile, that he would gladly smash it to smithereens if Keira asked him to.

“If he’s perfectly fine, and just in here for a cold, I swear to god-”

“He’s _dying_ ,” Ellie hissed, careful to keep her voice low enough so that Keira wouldn’t over hear. She stepped closer to Vicky and collared her. “He’s already in heart failure, and he’s got less than a twenty percent chance of making it out of that surgery alive. You do the math!” she snarled at the other woman.

Ellie let go of her as Vicky wiped at her eyes. She suddenly felt bad for this woman who was losing a man she spent over fourteen years of her life with, and was also dealing with raising a teenager that hated her almost as much as she hated her ailing father. Ellie touched Vicky’s shoulder.

“All Keira has to do is stand there and let him say goodbye. That’s it,” Ellie told her softly.

Vicky snorted and shook her head. “You make it sound so easy,” she sniped at Ellie, “If she sends Alec into cardiac arrest or he dies with the knowledge that his daughter truly hates him, that’s on your hands, not mine.”

The words struck fear into her heart, but she instructed Vicky where to go. With one last toss of her hair, Vicky ran outside to seize Keira (who had stealthily snuck away while they were talking). Dragging her protesting miserable daughter back into the hospital, they stomped off to the lifts.

Ellie had to sit down for a minute. She took out her phone to text Alec one last time, but it was already half past nine.

“ _Fuck_!”

There was a line for the lifts, so Ellie ran up four flights of stairs. By the time she reached the Cardiology unit it was nine thirty-eight.

She was too late.

Ellie almost fell to the floor, but she caught herself with a hand against the wall. She fought back the nausea and curled a hand over her mouth to suppress the sound of her retching. Staggering toward the restroom, the window to the waiting room caught her eye and stopped her dead in her tracks.

And as she looked through the glass, Ellie wondered if this was how Alec felt every time his heart stopped beating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CLIFFHANGER! I told you we’d eventually see Keira! FINALLY! I mean you sort of already did, but now you know SHE EXISTS. I waited over a year to post these scenes! In spite of wanting to wipe this beast of a story off the face of the earth, I stuck with it, and I MADE IT. I’ll probably fuck up the ending and you guys will hate me, but I’m shocked that we got this far. THANK YOU to everyone who read this, commented, encouraged and motivated me, edited for me, listened to me panic and whine and cry, and got me to where we are now! I couldn’t have done it without all of you! Next chapter should be up soon!


	47. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THREE years ago, I fell in love with Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller. It was purely for fun, until months later, I started crying writing Chapter Seven. I didn’t understand why, but it was this scene. I know we’re all excited about Series 3, but this has been sitting on my hard drive for years. I can’t keep it there forever. I have to let it go. It’s NOT the end, but you’ll want tissues, tea, a bottle of wine or something to cuddle. I’m so sorry, but sometimes you have to break your heart in order to heal it. 
> 
> Dear SEA, _I love you_. 
> 
> **TRIGGER WARNING: Hearts may or may not stop and/or break. You may experience tears, pain, grief, and anger. Please resist the urge to throw your laptop across the room or chuck your phone into the nearest ocean. The author is not responsible for any damages that result from reading the last section of this chapter. You can stop reading altogether or skip over it, but there is something in there that’s very important if you want to stick it out to the final chapter.**

_Thirty-three minutes_.

Alec paced the empty waiting room until his legs wouldn’t support him anymore. Collapsing into a chair, he rubbed his hands over his thighs. A variety of stupid magazines and today’s newspaper had been dumped onto a table beneath the telly that was broadcasting BBC on mute. Only twenty-four hours ago, he’d clumsily giftwrapped Ellie’s chocolate with yesterday’s paper. It was hard to believe that so little time had passed since he’d said goodbye to her.

And she still hadn’t come back.

Alec squinted at the clock across the room. It was half past nine and Iris had been gone for ten minutes. He was wondering if he should check on her, when the door opened. Iris appeared calmer and more composed, but she was too pale and she was fidgeting with the ring on her necklace as she sat in the chair beside him. That phone call had upset her.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” She tucked the ring away and compulsively straightened her collar and ironed blouse. It didn’t assuage her nerves or fool Alec.

“What’s wrong?” he interrogated her. “Who was it?”

“Alec,” she said softly, turning her whole body towards him and moving her hand to his back. She looked him in the eye.

“Darling, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” she instructed him as if he was a boy again. “Vicky knows you’re here, and she’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Alec blinked at her.

“You told her?”

Iris hesitated, and then nodded.

“For fuck’s sake!” Alec cursed, remembering his last unpleasant encounter with his ex. “Are you _trying_ to send me into cardiac arrest?” he snapped. Iris flinched.

“I don’t want to deal with her. She’ll go off on a tangent about how I’m a horrible deadbeat father who doesn’t even know his own daughter,” Alec spat.

“That’s not why she’s here, Alec.” Iris’ fingers combed through his hair and brushed the back of his suit jacket. She was avoiding his eyes as if she were hiding something - or _someone_ from him.

“Is she bringing Keira with her?” he asked. His heart fluttered in his chest as new hopes and fears unfurled within him. Iris clasped his shoulder, and Alec didn’t need to search her masked face for the answer.

“Alec,” Iris warned him as he tried to stand. He couldn’t; he was dizzy with the onslaught of excitement and anxiety, and Iris was holding him back.

“Alec, look at me.” Her voice was harsh and loud enough to get his attention. The veneer had been wiped clean and there was a frightening amount of emotion in her troubled eyes. She was scared and that scared Alec. Reaching for his hand again, she leaned closer.

“Keira is _not_ your little girl anymore,” she told him, squeezing his hand hard enough to hurt. “Alec, you need to understand that she’s nothing like the thirteen-year-old that you left with me that day.” Her grey eyes bore into his. “She’s a teenager and she’s –,” Iris sighed and her shoulders slumped, “She’s very angry, but not only at you.” She stroked her thumb over his. “Just remember that darling, alright?”

Alec studied her weary face. He tried to make out a picture of the woman his little girl had become; using only the few recent photographs he’d seen, the glimpse in the cafe, what Iris had told him, and more importantly what she had _not_ told him that was reflected in her fearful eyes.

“She still hates me,” he sighed.

“Darlin’, she hates pretty much everyone right now, including her mother and me,” Iris informed him, rubbing his back. “Don’t take it personal.”

“It’s kind of hard not to, since it is my fault,” Alec pointed out bitterly. He couldn’t look at Iris. “It started the day I left.”

Iris didn’t deny it. She wouldn’t lie to him now. Alec inexplicably thought of Ellie in the last rays of a setting sun, on the steps of that house he’d once told Keira they could live in. He wished that Ellie was here too. That was the first time she’d offered to take him to his daughter, and he’d wanted to kiss her for it. He closed his eyes, dwelling on the memory and how he’d traced the path to his daughter on her phone. He’d broken down and told Ellie that he was terrified of seeing his daughter, because he didn’t know if he could handle her hatred. Ellie had encouraged him to go see her anyway, and they’d been so _close,_ and yet so far…

“It’s alright, Iris,” he reassured her, opening his eyes to look at her. “I don’t care what she yells and screams at me, I already know that she hates me. It doesn’t matter whether I survive this thing or not, I need to see her one more time.”

Iris’ eyes watered and she smoothed his hair from his forehead. Alec let her soothe him with her hands, because it was helping her. When the doors burst open and Vicky pushed a hissing, scowling, pink-haired teenager inside, Alec thought he was ready.

He was wrong.

“Keira,” he breathed as his eyes locked with his daughter’s for the first time in almost two years. Iris’ hand clenched in his suit jacket, but Alec ignored her.

“ _Keira_.” He stood and immediately had to sit down again.

Struggling to get his emotions and his traitorously weak body in check, he drank in the sight of his daughter; standing less than ten feet away from him and well within his reach. He could _touch_ her; he could _talk_ to her; hell, he could even content himself with just _looking_ at her for another minute or two. That was all he was asking for: one minute with her.

Keira’s painted face was blank, but Vicky had a firm grip on her shoulder, like Iris had one on his. Alec wasn’t sure how many seconds or minutes passed, when his daughter moved a fraction of an inch toward the doorway. Alec shot to his feet before she could leave him. This time his legs supported him, but he didn’t risk another step. Not yet.  

Keira kept staring at him with that unnervingly blank face that Alec realized she’d learned from _him_. He almost laughed at the irony. Iris stood up behind him, but Alec had already taken a small step toward his daughter.

Keira watched him with a detached sort of curiosity. Alec could live with that. Even if she never spoke or heard a word he said, at least she wasn’t screaming that she despised him. But now that he had the opportunity to speak to her (after calling her twenty-five times yesterday) Alec didn’t know where to begin.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he cleared his throat.

“How’s school?” he croaked. Keira wrinkled her nose. The scowl returned and her eyes sparked with an anger that Alec understood. “I hated school too,” he sighed and the questions poured out. He’d lost track of the minutes, but he wanted to _talk_ to her so badly and he wanted to know _everything_ about her.

“Do you still hate Maths?” His mind journeyed back to a New Year’s Eve on a sofa littered with takeaway containers, and the remains of a school project they’d quickly and happily discarded and forgotten. “Do you remember the last time I tried to help you with your Maths homework? It was that impossible project that you were supposed to finish over the holidays, but it was so ridiculous that we stayed up all night watching the idiots on the telly instead, remember?” he queried, rambling on. “We got Chinese and a whole bag full of fortune cookies, and you insisted on opening all of them.” All but one. Alec stopped babbling to catch his breath.

Keira was still staring at him, but her eyes were wider, and she was standing closer to her mother as if she were afraid of him. Alec could live with that too, but he didn’t know where to go from here. It was hard to have a conversation when the other person wouldn’t engage, Alec would know, he was usually on the other side.

“Your hair’s really pink,” he blurted; a stellar observation for a man that had made a living as a DI. “It looks nice,” he complimented her. 

Keira snorted. Alec wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign. She was hiding herself behind so much makeup, and layers of black leather, and flashy clinking necklaces and bracelets that Alec couldn’t see who she was or read her expression.

“I’m sorry I called you so early this morning, and that I called you twenty-five times yesterday,” Alec apologized, sensing that his time with her was slipping and sliding away from him. Any second now, she was going scream at him, and she would shatter what remained of his bleeding heart. Her eyes were aflame, and her hands balled into fists at her sides.

“I only wanted to say goodbye.” His voice caught and he swallowed. “And I wanted to tell you that I - that I love you, darlin’.”

And that was it. He’d finally told her. Alec felt as if a weight had been lifted off of him. He could die now. It hurt that she didn’t care, but it was all over now. She could hate him for the rest of her long happy life, and he would never know.

“You don’t have to stay,” Alec said softly, gazing at his daughter and into those blue eyes that were exactly the same size and shape as her mother’s. Those eyes were responsible for him falling in love with Vicky, and then even deeper in love with the baby that had opened her eyes for the first time in the shelter of his arms.

It was too much. He glanced at the clock that was ticking down and not helping him at all. He wanted to say everything to her, but there was too much in his head and in his heart, and there wasn’t time to say it. Keira was silent enough that he could almost pretend that she didn’t hate him. At least he got to see her before he went. Uncrossing his arms, he tugged at his ear and propped his other hand on his hip. 

“I’m sure you have to get back to school, wouldn’t want you to miss another exam because of me.”

“Dad.”

Alec nearly missed it and kept talking, because he hadn’t heard that word in so long. The day Fred had mistakenly called him Daddy had broken his heart, because of this young woman in front of him.

“ _Dad_ ,” Keira said again and took a hesitant step forward. Alec got a clearer picture of her as she paused just out of his reach, but close enough that he could stretch out his long arms and pull her in for a hug. He remembered when she was small enough to fit perfectly against his chest, but now she was taller than Tom, Iris and Ellie. Alec hadn’t noticed how much she’d shot up, but now he could measure it. He feasted his eyes on her.

God, she was so _beautiful_.

Vicky let out a strangled sob and clapped a hand over her mouth; he’d said it out loud. He looked at Keira and found tears in her eyes as well. When she spoke, her voice was deeper and hoarser than Alec recalled.

“Mum said you left because you didn’t want me to know that it was her.”

Iris gasped behind him. Vicky sobbed again, turning around so that she didn’t have to look at him. It took Alec a minute to catch up. Vicky had told her the truth.

“Is it true?” Keira asked and closed the distance between them. “Did you leave us and lie because you loved Mum?”

“No, Keira.” Alec instinctively wiped away the tear that fell from her eye, heedless of the makeup he was smudging and the mask that he was peeling away. “Darling, I did it because I love _you_.” It sounded stupid now that he voiced it aloud, and now that he’d suffered through the years of pain and loss that had followed; but it was true. He’d done it for _her_ , all of it.

“You’re an idiot and so is Mum,” Keira snapped at him, smearing the makeup on her other eye. “I hated you for three years and now you’re-” She faltered and scanned the waiting room. Her eyes darted to the clock and Alec reached out to steer her away from it. Keira jumped at the touch. Alec froze, expecting her to run from him.

Instead she tentatively started to lean into him. Alec awkwardly slid his arm around her shoulders, waiting for her to wriggle free or push him away. But she didn’t move a muscle. He risked winding his other arm around her torso and gently, carefully, slowly, embraced her.

“Can I have a hug?” he asked, belatedly. She was still rigid within the circle his arms. “Please, darlin’.”

Vicky was sobbing outright and Iris had sat down, but Alec didn’t see or hear any of this because Keira had snaked her arms around him. He had to adjust his arms to accommodate the five inches she’d grown since the last time he’d held her; but even though she was taller, pink-haired, covered in makeup, and clad in layers of leather and black and silver armor; Alec closed his eyes and felt his little girl nestled against his chest.  

“Dad, I don’t want you to die,” Keira rasped in his ear.

“I won’t,” he promised, but his voice wavered. Pressing a lingering kiss to her forehead, he hugged her like it would be the last time he ever could.

*

Out of sight and out of mind, Ellie stood outside the double doors, watching Alec reunite with his _family._ Now she realized how much Alec had missed not only Keira, but having a home. Those people that he’d known and loved and lived with for decades were his _home_. It didn’t matter that three years had passed or that mistakes had been made, for twenty minutes Alec was able to return to the happier life he’d pined after that Ellie had no part in.

Keira let go of her father with a soundless watery laugh, and Iris pulled the crying teenager into her arms. Alec went to Vicky and touched her arm. He said something and Vicky was crying on his shoulder. Ellie felt a pang of jealousy as Alec wrapped his arms around that woman that had broken his heart. Shutting his eyes and stroking her blonde hair, Alec looked like he was at peace for the first time since Ellie had met him. Ellie hadn’t been able to give that to him, but she had tried, and today she’d taken a risk bringing Keira and Vicky here. There was nothing she could do now, but wait for them to tell her that it was _over_ , and that he was _gone_.

“What are you doing out here, lass?”

Ellie startled. It was the same Scottish doctor that she’d met at the hospital last week and had seen earlier. The man’s voice held none of the accusation or harshness that Vicky and Iris had turned on her in their grief.  His kind eyes were narrowed, but he merely looked puzzled and curious.

“It’s Ellie, isn’t it?” He waited on her nod before he introduced himself. “Doctor Baxter. But please call me Marty.” Ellie ignored his outstretched hand; her eyes were glued to the window into Alec Hardy’s past, present and future. Alec was now holding his ex-wife at arm’s length, and Ellie couldn’t drag her eyes away from them or their daughter.

“I blackmailed Vicky,” Ellie confessed, because she had to tell _someone_.

“Clever,” Marty chuckled and smiled at her. “I knew I liked you.” In the waiting room, Alec looked over his shoulder. Ellie backed into the wall before he spotted her. Marty frowned at her, hiding in a corner like a coward from the man she loved.

“Don’t tell Alec,” she said, struggling to remain upright. “I don’t want to spoil this for him or for them.” They both looked through the window at Alec, who was standing within the circle of the three women that loved him, each in their own way.

“Come on lass, he’s got a few more minutes,” Marty urged her, motioning toward the door. Ellie shook her head.

“I have to go. I only came to make sure...” She didn’t want to ruin the fragile family reunion that Alec had waited three bloody years for, and he would only have a few more minutes to enjoy. “Don’t tell him I was here,” she stammered, meeting the man’s kind eyes. If Marty told him, Alec would feel obligated to talk to her, and he would lose another precious moment that could’ve been spent with his family.

“Ellie,” Marty said gently, eyeing her with concern, “I think you should come inside and sit down with us.”

“I can’t,” Ellie’s voice quivered, “I’m not _family._ ” She furiously swiped at her runny nose, and tried not to reveal how upset she was that Alec had chosen suicide over a few more weeks with her and her boys. But Marty saw something that made him pause.

“I’m sorry he broke your heart, lass,” he apologized. “I tried to warn you.”

Ellie looked beyond him at Alec who was gazing at his daughter. She watched as he brushed a strand of pink hair from Keira’s cheek and tenderly tucked it behind her pierced ear

“Maybe it was for the best,” Ellie decided softly as Marty left her to join his family. 

Ellie pushed off from the wall and Keira’s eyes met hers over Alec’s frail shoulders. For a moment, they stared at each other. Ellie was tempted to walk in there, solely to meet the young woman who Alec loved more than anyone else. She wanted to tell Keira all the wonderful things about her father that no one ever would or could, because none of them understood how much he’d done for Ellie and her boys; and not even Alec knew how much Ellie _loved_ him

Keira cocked her head and tapped her father’s arm.

But by the time Alec turned around to see what his daughter was frowning at, Ellie was already gone

*

Alec sat with his daughter until his final ten minutes were up. He had thanked Iris and Vicky for giving him the one thing he wanted more than anything else. The moment Keira had hugged him, Alec had felt that last piece of his broken heart slide back into place. He was still overwhelmed by everything that he’d felt in the second his heart had been _healed_. He’d thought his heart would stop right there in the waiting room, but a warm calm had settled over him as she snuggled closer, and he knew that this was the definition of peace.

They'd called him in for the pre-op and Alec had taken off his suit, peeling off every last layer of his armor. Oddly, he didn't feel stripped of his dignity or the little strength he had left that was stitching him together. As soon as he’d settled down to wait for the sedation to kick in and the final preparations to be made before they wheeled him into the operating theatre, Keira was allowed in for his last few minutes.

She was shy and timid with him; they were almost strangers. It didn't help that he was in a thin hospital gown that made it more real and disconcerting, and made him appear more vulnerable than he had been when she’d walked into the waiting room.

"Come here, darlin," he urged her, patting the spot beside him. "Please," he added sheepishly.

Keira sat down and Alec asked her something. He didn't remember what the question was; all that mattered was that she started talking. She was nervous at first. Alec heard a hint of his Scottish lilt in her voice, as well as the rasp of the cigarettes she now smoked that he'd breathed in when he hugged her. He didn't care if she had bad habits now, and that she was a little wild and angry and out of control; he'd already fallen in love with this young woman she'd grown into.

"Dad, are you even listening?" she teased him, cracking a small smile. He was and he was learning her all over again and memorizing her right down to the smallest details; like the one crooked tooth she still had and the odd tattoo on her wrist she was hiding beneath a long sleeve and a spiky bangle.

"Go on," he encouraged her. He got lost again in the sound of her hoarse voice as he marveled at her.

The nurse came right in the middle of her story and told him Keira had to leave. They looked at each other and Keira's eyes welled with tears.

"I'm not finished with my story," she protested. Alec cupped her cheek and pressed another kiss to the exact center of her forehead.

"You can tell me how it ends tomorrow," he said into her hair as Keira bent toward him and gave him a one-armed hug.

"Fine," she huffed, but her voice was shaking as she pulled away. "I'll be holding you to that," she warned him, rubbing at her tearful eyes. "I'll talk to you _later_ ," she said, hopping off the bench and walking backwards toward the door, "Because you HAVE to hear how it ends.

"I love you, darlin’," he called after her.

"Love you too, Daddy," Keira said, her voice breaking on a sob.

And then she was gone. Alec closed his eyes and one last burning tear dripped down his cheek.

"Ready?" the nurse asked.

Alec nodded and sent up one final plea. All he wanted was a few more minutes so that he could hear his daughter finish one more story. He got up and looked over his shoulder at the closed door one last time. And then he followed the nurse into that room where his heart would stop beating.

 

*

 

_Four hours_.

Ellie had been waiting for four hours and an eternity. From where she sat, she had a view of everyone that went in and out of the waiting room. Every time someone came out of those double doors, she jumped. None of them took any heed of her, sitting a safe distance away, hidden behind a magazine that she wasn’t reading. Iris, Keira, Vicky and Marty were still in there. Another anxious family had joined them, fussing over a sickly woman with a cane. Ellie wondered if that woman would walk out of there alive, or if her surgery was as hopeless as Alec’s.

It was four of the worst hours of her life. She almost wished that Alec had died right there in her arms in the out of order restroom. Then she wouldn’t have to wait for the death sentence. Every drawn out minute that ticked by on the clock, pained her. False hope hurt more than anything else. After Alec had told her that it was Joe who killed Danny, she’d hoped that Alec had been mistaken. The truth had sliced her open, but she’d been crushed beneath the weight of the smallest flicker of hope she’d had that Alec had gotten it _wrong_. Ellie hadn’t dared to hope for anything after that, until one stormy night when she found Alec Hardy in the nursery with Fred. He’d told her that she was strong and brave, and he _believed_ in her. That was what she’d needed to hear to begin to hope that she could rebuild what Joe had cruelly taken from her and her boys.

Ellie had hoped that Alec would get the pacemaker, and that he would be a part of her new life and the happiness that she was so close to finding. But it had been too late. That delusional hope that had sparked between them, Ellie would have to let it die with him. 

She and her boys would be alright no matter what happened today. Thanks to Alec, she had both feet on solid ground. She had a new job, a new town, and a new life that she could continue to build without him. It would be _hard_ , but Alec had helped to prepare her for it, even when it meant removing himself from her life. He hadn’t succeeded. Ellie couldn’t wrap her mind around his twisted logic that came straight from his damaged heart, but they’d both known that this moment would arrive. Ellie hadn’t been expecting it to be _this_ soon, but yesterday he’d begged her to let him go, and now she didn’t have a choice.

The doors banged open and Ellie leapt to her feet.

Alec’s daughter stumbled out of the waiting room, slammed into the opposite wall, and relentlessly kept going, using the wall as a guide as she wobbled toward Ellie. Ellie’s heart skipped a beat, and then started beating so hard that she couldn’t hear the strangled guttural noises that Keira was making as she got closer and _closer_.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Ellie asked. Her maternal instincts took over when the rest of her body and mind stopped functioning. Because she knew - she _knew_ \- even before Keira looked up at her with red eyes, and a flushed wet face washed of all makeup, that this frightened little girl had _lost_ the man that was supposed to be there for her and had wanted to be there to catch her when she fell.

She went down and Ellie caught her in her arms, pulling her head to her breast.

“My Dad – he – he-”

Ellie shushed her before she could finish, hugging her tightly. Keira shook with another uncontrollable wail, and then she clung to Ellie like Ellie had clung to Alec, when it felt like their world was collapsing around them. Alec had shielded her and dried her tears, but Ellie knew that this time, she couldn’t do for his daughter what he’d always managed to do for her. 

“It’s alright,” she soothed Keira, rocking her like a child and stroking her hair.

“No, it’s _fucking_ not!” Keira burst out, sobbing and digging her nails into the back of Ellie’s blouse, “He should be here! He told me he wouldn’t – he _promised_ –“

“ _Keira_!” Vicky was suddenly there, snatching Keira away from Ellie. She swept a weak and weeping Keira up into her arms as if she were a ragdoll. Keira went willingly into her mother’s arms, seeking a comfort that Ellie had been foolish to think that she could provide. “Keira,” her mother said softly. Keira was wailing, raging in her grief. Vicky looked up at Ellie, still standing there, with her arms outstretched toward that last surviving piece of a man whom they had all loved.

“Don’t touch my daughter!” Vicky snarled, holding onto Keira with a feral possessiveness that every parent was familiar with. “I don’t know who the hell you are but I don’t want to. This is _exactly_ why we didn’t want her here. This is _your_ fault!”

Ellie stared at her, stunned, with the blood roaring in her ringing ears.

“Vicky! Vicky, wait!” Iris had come out of the waiting room with Marty and the surgeon.

“I don’t care what you do with the bloody story just stay away from us,” Vicky spat, her eyes flashing. Keira whimpered and Ellie saw the pain she’d caused for them.

“Vicky, calm down,” Marty urged her. Iris tried to take Keira away from her mother, saying something that Ellie didn’t catch.

She was already running to the stairwell and scrambling down four flights of stairs. She ran out of that bloody hospital before the walls closed in on her and the glass shattered around her.

Somehow she found herself outside in the sunlight that Alec would never feel again, on a bench where she last saw him. She retched and then she got sick in a hedge. The same stupid sparrow flew out, narrowly missing her face and that stupid fucking cut that Alec had wasted so much of his precious time trying to heal. She got sick again.

When she'd emptied her stomach, she pushed herself to her feet. She took it one small step at a time but eventually she reached her car. Her hands were steadier as they curled over the steering wheel that Alec had once held, the same night when he’d recklessly crossed that line and kissed her. The memory faded and she was left alone in the car with nothing but the impossibly loud silence.

Taking a deep breath, she drove out of the parking lot and she didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t kill me, I cried too. I am so sorry for this, but that’s not the last chapter…


	48. The Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT’S MY FOURTH ANNIVERSARY! It’s NOT the last chapter, but it is a chapter I couldn’t cut. I had to retrace my footsteps and say my own goodbyes to my beloved beach. Just a reminder that my Sandbrook case is AU, Keira is Alec’s daughter, Vicky’s the ex-wife, Iris is his Aunt, Marty’s her nephew, and Worthington’s Ellie’s boss/Alec’s former co-worker. Previously on WTSB, a cold case and a creepy cemetery in Sandbrook, a summer stroll on the jetty, early birthday gifts, promises, lots of tears, lots of angry voicemails, RIP Alec’s mobile, Alec and Ellie said goodbye, then Ellie left Alec and blackmailed Vicky into bringing Keira to the hospital (he hadn’t seen her in two years) before he went in for a surgery he had slim chances of surviving (Iris pushed for it). Iris took credit for reuniting the family after Ellie begged Marty not to tell Alec she was still there. The last scene ends with a crying Keira and Vicky blaming Ellie for her daughter’s grief. And Ellie ran… 
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> **TRIGGER WARNING: You may find yourself either crying or plotting ways to kill the author. You might want to wait until after she posts the final chapter before you take action. But if you do experience these symptoms, just know that the author apologizes and is sending out virtual hugs.**
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> **Dear SEA, it’s been four years since I started writing this on a whim, never imagining that months later this would be the way your story ended. I rewrote it over and over again… I can’t change your ending, but God knows I’ve tried.  
> **  
>  *

_Love you too, Daddy._

*

Keira hated the bloody surgeon, the bloody hospital and the cloying sickening stench that had to be death. And she _hated_ Mum even more for dragging her there. She'd nicked her father's wallet from Iris's purse and bolted at her first opportunity.

She didn't stop running until she was on the next bus out of South Seaberg.

Her father's wallet contained just enough cash to cover what she'd need to quell the pounding in her head and the tremor in her hands. Derrick would have the cheap stuff, but it was taking more and more to block her father out. Tonight with his voice still echoing in her mind, it would be nigh impossible.

_You're so beautiful_.

She told herself she didn't fucking care. He'd left her. She'd had three years to adjust and to fill the emptiness with something stronger. It didn't matter that today he'd held her, that he'd listened to her, that he'd looked at her and that he hadn't judged her. It didn't matter that he was still a soppy idiot.

_I did it because I love_ you.

He'd lied to her and _he_ 'd made the decision to take the fall for Mum. But Keira had shut him out when he'd wanted to come back to her, even though he had to have known what a fucked up mess she'd become. And then he'd promised her - he'd _promised_ her that he wouldn't - he wouldn't -

_I won't die. You can tell me how it ends tomorrow. I love you darlin'_.

Keira got off at the next stop, determined to forget him.

But that one glimpse of her father had already changed everything.

*

_Please. Please, you stupid, bloody idiot, don't you dare fucking die on_ her _or me or Iris or Fred or Tom._

*

Ellie kept driving until she ran out of petrol and had to eat. She didn't want to go home, so she grabbed something at the petrol station and pulled off to eat it. The hours passed in a hazy blur, as Ellie sat at a picnic table in a neglected park, peeling at splintering wood and etching her name into it with her fingernail. It wasn't until nightfall that she realized she'd been here with Alec, and that she'd carved his name amongst crudely drawn hearts and signatures of young lovers.

She felt as if Alec had carved her heart out too, leaving her hollow and empty. Her boys would alleviate the ache tomorrow with loving hugs and bright-eyed smiles, but tonight Ellie was barely strong enough to walk into her house. Shutting the door behind her, she leaned against it. Her knees threatened to give out on her, but if she slid down to the floor, she'd never get up again.

"Where the hell have you been?"

The hallway lit up and a shadow crossed Ellie's path.

"I know you were with _him_!"

Ellie went into the kitchen. Her sister was right behind her, hissing in her ear so she wouldn't wake the kids. "This time you're going to tell me what was so bloody important that you needed to see him at the crack of dawn. I tried calling you _both_ earlier, and I left messages-"

Ellie didn't hear anything as she went through the motions of making a cup of tea, or at least she was trying. She nearly burnt her hand on the kettle. The green glow of the clock over the stove bathed her shaking fingers as she held them up in front of her. Midnight had struck and one of the worst days of her life had finally ended. Ellie cupped a hand over her mouth and shuddered.

"He's not coming back," she told Lucy.

"I don't believe it." Lucy shook her head and drummed her fingers on the countertop. "He _always_ shows up."

"He's not coming back," Ellie repeated. Her voice was remarkably steady, but still carried s _omething_ that made Lucy freeze.

"Lucy." She looked at her sister. Lucy's eyes widened as it dawned on her. Ellie trembled as she forced the dreadful words out. "Luce, Alec's _never_ coming back."

The silence was awful, the ringing in her ears was worse, but the echo of those four words was terrible and terrifying. A whirring click of a teakettle, and suddenly all of the gears inside of her were grinding to a halt. She couldn't breathe. Alec's heart had _stopped,_ but the cogs and wheels of time mercilessly spun faster, tearing her apart.

Her sister sat her down and Ellie explained what happened. She must've cried, because Lucy was rocking her like she used to when they were children, and Ellie had had a nightmare about the monstrous skeleton in her closet. Alec had tried to make the nightmares go away - just like Lucy had when Ellie was small - but death and grief were monsters that no one could fight.

"Oh, _El_ , I'm so, _so_ sorry."

Ellie wept for Alec, for Keira, and for her own two sons who had lost another father. And her sister held her until Ellie was ready to stop crying and let go.

"Don't tell Fred or Tom," Ellie begged her. Lucy grabbed the tea towel off the stove and cleaned the tear tracks from her face.

"Don't tell them. Don't tell anyone," Ellie pleaded, grasping at her sister's arms.

She couldn't handle saying the words out loud, let alone breaking the news to her sons. Now she understood why Alec had been so hell-bent on leaving. He'd given Ellie a gift and a way out. Joe's dirty little secret and Danny's death had been splashed across papers and had driven her from her home. But Alec had done everything in his power to leave her exactly where he wanted her to be. She had a fresh start in a new town with her two boys comfortably settled and already somewhat happier.

"We're not going to tell them," Ellie repeated. "We're not going to tell _anyone_."

Alec's last wish was for her to let go and move on, and to keep his death from her boys until the scars had healed. Ellie would do everything in her power to fulfil that wish to give her children a better life. One day, in the future, when the wound wasn't so fresh, and they'd left the past behind them, she'd tell Tom that Alec was no longer with the family he'd only had twenty minutes with. And one day, in the far future, she'd tell Fred about what had happened to _Daddy_.

But not tonight.

Suddenly, Ellie knew what she had to do.

"I need to go to Broadchurch. I'll be back in the morning," Ellie promised, squeezing her sister's hand. Lucy smoothed down Ellie's curls and bit her lip.

"I was wrong, El," she began haltingly, "Alec Hardy was a _good_ man. If things had been different..." Lucy tapered off and dabbed at the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

"I know you didn't want me to get hurt, but I'm not your _baby_ sister," Ellie told her gently, but firmly. "I can make my own decisions and stand on my own two feet now."

Lucy studied her for a long moment and then she stood. Ellie sometimes forgot that she was so tiny, because somehow she could still fully envelope her in her thin arms.

"You'll always be my baby sister. And I'll always be here for you, I promise," Lucy vowed, kissing Ellie's cheek. "I'm sorry, El. After so many years of letting you take care of me - when Joe left and Alec showed up - I wanted to help."

"I know, Luce."

Lucy and Alec had been there for her when her world had gone dark, and she'd needed someone to guide her out of that horrific storm. But now that she'd let go of Alec, it was time for her to release Lucy's hand and walk away on her own. Her sister would always be there, but Ellie was confident that she could take care of her boys and that they could all move forward. Whatever storm that was thrown into their path, she was certain that they'd get through it.

"Thank you." Ellie brushed a kiss over Lucy's forehead. Then she turned around and left the kitchen and another piece of her old self behind.

*

_When you wake up, we're going to Broadchurch. We'll take the boys and Keira too. We'll all go to the beach and then we'll walk along those cliffs you love so much. And then - then you can ask me again._

*

It started with a storm on those cliffs, overlooking the beloved beach she'd always call _home_.

She stood on the precipice and gazed out over the ocean that was so _alive_. The water swelled and the waves crashed against the sandy shore. The sea rose and fell, and the tides went in and out in an endless cycle. Ellie had fallen off of the ledge and she'd nearly drowned, but she'd risen up from the ashes of her old life that Joe had burnt to the ground. Alec's death had crushed her too, but she _would_ rise again, and this time she'd be _stronger_.

The hut behind her looked empty, but Ellie knew that there was a ghost hiding in the darkness. She hoped that Alec had freed Danny from that shadowed room, and had laid him to rest when he'd arrested Joe; but the stains that Joe had tried to scrub away would always be there. That bastard had left a stain on her too, but Alec's soft caress had wiped away some of the filth she'd felt on her skin and within her memories. And tonight she'd leave that all behind.

Taking a deep breath, she returned to the heart of her old life; the house she'd once called home. From the outside, it looked the same, but inside it had all of the warmth and comforts that she never would've found again if she'd stayed. Fortunately, the house had quickly sold to a cheerful Irish family who were unaware of the dark secrets that the house held within those walls. The spectres would never bother them. Ellie wished that they would be as happy as she and her boys had once been. Turning her back on it, she headed for the outskirts of town.

Amongst the shrubbery and hedges, she found her safe haven and temporary home. She always knew that she'd have to leave Broadchurch, but she hadn't been able to break free until Alec had walked in with a storm on his heels. He'd tramped through the cottage, climbed into her bed, and together they'd escaped the loneliness and the nightmares, curled around each other. She kept calling him back to her, seeking out the warmth that they'd discovered that night, and feeding and nurturing it until it sparked and kindled into a flame. The fire had blazed but they hadn't been strong enough to control it. Ellie wondered now if it would've made a difference if Alec had stamped that spark out months ago. It didn't matter, the fire had razed Alec to the ground, but it hadn't killed her. Far from it. If anything, his death would only make her more determined to _live_ the life he'd wanted for her and her boys.

She climbed past the house, pausing at the overlook where she'd brought Alec on her birthday, before their first kiss in the kitchen. Then she circled around the old Church to the cemetery ensconced behind it, and Danny's grave glittering amongst the crumbling headstones.

The last time she'd been here, Alec had told her that he was dying. And now he was _gone_. Cupping her hand over her mouth, she sank to her knees and slumped against Danny's gravestone.

Tomorrow, Alec's family would choose a place for him to _rest_. Alec's loved ones wanted nothing to do with her, and Alec had forbidden her from going to his funeral or his grave. The man that his family would remember was someone that Ellie had only caught snatches of in fleeting smiles and short wheezing laughs. She would never know the happier man that he'd once been, but she had known and loved a man that they would never know. She wondered if she had met a younger Alec if she could've loved him as much as she loved the older, grumpier man that had been so _different_ from her ex-husband. Ellie didn't dwell on it. Alec had been as broken as she had been. He'd been able to understand her, comfort her and love her in a way that no one else could or ever would. She left her thoughts and prayers at the grave that had brought them together and moved on.

Broadchurch was dead quiet at this hour; a ghost town. Shivering, Ellie understood the eeriness that Alec had felt every time he'd entered Broadchurch. She'd been gone for a month, but in some way this place was already strange to her. Somehow, it didn't feel like home anymore. Ellie loved the beach, the ocean, the hint of salt in the air, the sea breeze, the swaying sea grass, the cliffs, and even the scratchy granules of sand that got into everything; but as she looked up into that never-ending sky, she knew she'd lost something here that she'd never find again no matter how many times she returned. She sat down on that stupid bench anyway.

Closing her eyes, she waited. Some people believed that when you lost someone, there was a moment when you would _feel_ them. When she lost her father, she'd felt a warmth in the room that she couldn't explain, and when her mother had followed him, she'd had a dream that night that her mother had told her that everything would be okay. She didn't know if that was the kind of _feeling_ that grieving loved ones searched for when they visited churches, and mediums, and held seances to summon the silenced voices of the dead, but Ellie had found a kind of closure on both those occasions.

She didn't feel _anything_ now. He'd promised that like Broadchurch, he'd stay in her head and in her heart; but Ellie had never felt further away from him than she did now. She was sitting on the same bloody bench where he'd first held her, and she realized that she was waiting for him to reach for her. He'd always followed her and he'd _always_ been there for her; but when she opened her eyes, she was alone.

Alec wasn't coming.

Not tonight.

"Can you at least give me a fucking sign!" she burst out.

Her pocket vibrated and Ellie groaned. She already knew that she couldn't waste her life waiting on a bench, but he could've given her _something_ that might've made it easier to get up without him. The phone persisted until she dug it out of her pocket and squinted at the caller ID. Ellie almost chucked her phone over the seawall.

It was that bloody woman who had convinced Alec to commit suicide, after trying to stop him from seeing his own daughter. Ellie wanted to yell at that frigid woman, but screaming at Iris and blaming her for Alec's death wasn't going to bring him back.

Iris left a voicemail, but Ellie deleted it without even listening to it. In a fit of fury, Ellie deleted Iris' contact from her phone, because she was _never_ calling that woman. Vicky and Iris had made their feelings perfectly clear, and Ellie had no desire to meet them again. In spite of leather, chains and combat boots, and the uncontrollable raging anger radiating from Keira; Ellie had witnessed the hug and the small smile that Keira had given her father. She would've liked to have had the chance to speak to Keira, and to check up on her in the future. It was one of the few things that Alec had asked of her; but now, Ellie wasn't sure she could fulfil that promise.

Impulsively, she rang Alec one last time. She got his voicemail; a generic message that included a snippet of his voice and a hint of the disdain he'd had for his first name.

He'd let her call him _Alec_ anyway.

"You bloody idiot," Ellie's voice echoed from the other end of the empty line, and suddenly the words were pouring out of her with a final crashing wave of grief and anger. "You stupid, fucking, bleeding _bastard_. You can go _fuck_ yourself!" she snarled into the handset. "I _hate_ you for this. I _hate_ you for all the shit that you put me through. You _left_ me and my sons. You made them cry, your blood's probably still on my fucking floor, you're stuck in my bloody head all the bloody time, and I can't-" she choked up. She didn't hate him, she bloody _loved_ him. "I can't - I can't forget you, but God, Alec, I _want_ to." She moaned and sniffled. She didn't want to forget him, but it _hurt_.

"I don't know if I can do this." She gasped. "How am I supposed to move on if I see you everywhere and in everything? Please, Alec, can you-" Another whimper cut her off. Several interminable seconds passed before she could breathe past the hole in her chest.

"You were right," she conceded. "You should've left a long time ago and taken your stubborn broody shtick with you. Then I wouldn't be sitting here on this bloody bench, weeping over some fuckwitted knob who couldn't get it through his thick skull that I-I-lo-" She broke off and swiped her sleeve across her nose. "I'll be okay," she assured him. "I'm going to be fine." Her voice cracked. "But I'll never forgive you, Alec. You have _no_ idea how much I - I -lo - _fuck_." The three words were strangled by her tears. He'd never hear them. She was talking to her bloody self.

"Goodbye, Alec."

Ellie listened to the silence long after the voicemail timed out and the call had ended. Swallowing one last sob, she stared at the black screen until her anger trickled away.

"I love you, Alec," she whispered.

Then with a shaking hand, she unlocked her phone to delete the contact, even though it could mean that she'd never hear his voice again.

She was too exhausted and drained for her body to handle anymore sobbing, but scalding tears irritated her eyes and wet her cheeks. Twisting around on the bench, she found the ocean and the brightening wide open sky. The colours became more distinct with each slow minute that passed. A car drove by on the road behind her, and a dog barked at seagulls on the beach below. All around her the world was waking up and coming _alive_. Ellie felt dead inside, but she was already itching to get back to Edgewood so that she could see her boys. She knew that Lucy, Tom and Fred were waiting for her, ready to relight that spark of life within her that no tragedy could ever smother. Lucy would have coffee for her; Fred would giggle and splatter his breakfast everywhere; and Tom would barrel downstairs to give her a quick hug and a mumbled "love you" before school. Her heart might have been broken, but life would go on with or without Alec Hardy.

And as the sun rose and a new day dawned; Ellie wiped the tears from her eyes, got up off that bench, and left Broadchurch and her tragic past behind her.

*

_God will put you in the right place, even if you don't know it at the time_.

*

Sitting on the beach beneath the cliffs, a young woman gazes out over the same ocean that Ellie Richardson had months earlier. Her hair's a shade of blue that falls somewhere between the azure sky overhead and the endless sea, curling and cresting in small waves to kiss that bright horizon. She's beautiful, from the sparkle in her eyes to her pale arms that still retain bruises of an uglier but nearly invisible hue of black and blue.

Silver and sapphire bangles flash in the sunlight as she hugs her long legs to her chest and smiles. No one would ever know from looking at her that less than a year ago she was teetering on the edge of a deadly drug addiction. She's healthy and clean now, largely thanks to a scarred man with a heart deeper than the ocean and a mysterious woman who caught her once when she was falling.

Her smile stretches wide as a curly-haired boy in an orange jumper stops to goggle at her for several minutes.

"You're a bit young for me," she teases the child, "But you're very cute."

She playfully tousles the boy's curls and watches his brown eyes follow the glimmer of her bracelets. "You fancy these?" The fascinated child plucks at the one with real sapphires and a diamond. "That one's my favorite," she agrees, "My Dad gave it to me, but you can have this one." She removes one of the cheaper ones and offers it to him.

"Where's your Dad?" She squints down the beach, seeking out the young man who was with him earlier.

"Daddy's protecting the princess." He's obviously not talking about the man currently chatting up a girl in a bikini.

"What's your name?" she asks.

"Fred," he answers with a shy smile.

"I'm Keira."

His eyes bulge and he gasps.

"Princess Keira?"

For wee Fred, it's love at first sight.

For Keira, it's a slow, dawning realization that doesn't hit her until she's back in Sandbrook with a torn photograph of a curly-haired woman and her two boys.

But by then it's already twelve months too late...

*

Nevertheless, that night is when the storm breaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, I loved and fucking hated it so much. It’s a complete mess. If you want, you can stop here. But this was never the ending I intended. There’s always been another chapter in my head. It’s been there since day one and I’ve fought with it but I’ve never been able to get rid of it.


End file.
